Nike's 2018 World Cup fonts Typography lovers this is for you
Among the lovers of design and sports fashion, there is a niche that shares love and madness towards one of the secondary details of football shirts: the fonts. After years of disappointing, boring and banal fonts, the big brands - especially adidas and Nike - have rediscovered the pleasure for creative typography and we will appreciate the results this summer during the World Cup in Russia. The British designer Craig Ward explained in an interview how difficult it is to design a football font for FIFA competitions: there are a myriad of rules and guidelines drawn up by FIFA which must be followed to ensure visibility for the stadium fans, for the referee and for the televisions (here you can read the full document, it's more than 100 pages).
However - as for the donuts - not all fonts come with the hole: adidas has been heavily criticised for the square font that will be on all the uniforms designed by the three stripes in Russia. Instead, Nike has taken a different path using a standardized base for his teams with variations for each national team: here are all the fonts used by Nike for the 2018 World Cup.
The Basic Font
Portugal's font very similar to the French one, lines are a little bit sharper and the numbers embody a different graphic: a straight line cuts the numbers inside which contain a stylized version of The Military Order of Christ's cross, a Lusitan national symbol. The golden colorway in the home uniform is a tribute to the victory of Euro 2016, while in the travel shirt.
Nigeria
Nigeria's font fits perfectly on the stunning shirt that the Swoosh designed for the World Cup. It is a little variation on the basic font.
Brazil
A real pity, three different fonts with the same theme of filling the numbers with mini graphics: a beehive pattern for China, the five-point star from the National Flag mixed with the eight-point star from the Mapuche war flag for La Roja and obviously the stars for the United States.
