Keep Up Running Club is a Stockholm-based elite running team. Their apparel was designed by Adam Nyström Zirke, who chose BST Ritma. The new design was first seen at the Stockholm Marathon 2024, worn by club founder and competitive runner Kristofer Låås.

Backdrop mural designed and painted for a promotional event by Adidas and JD Sports with Glass Events, using a mixture of Owners XXNarrow XBlack by MCKL and custom lettering by Andrew Wolfenden.

Posters and graphics designed by Horah Inc. for the Adidas Vintage Market, which took place in September 2023 in Paris.

Alias is “the official selling app of GOAT and Flight Club”. It allows fashionistas to resell new and used sneakers, apparel and accessories.

Laura Csocsán designed the Seller Report 2023. She used the variable font Harber by Benoît Bodhuin in combination with alias’s custom versions of Metodo and Metodo Mono, designed by Davide Tomatis and available from Optimo.

The wordmark is based on ABC Bingo, with customizations.

Launched last year as one of Footballco’s latest channels, Indivisa is a new women’s football brand designed to create an exciting community for fans of the game.

In partnership with the in-house creative team, we identified a strong visual aesthetic to help establish the awareness of women’s football, in an empowering, passionate way. Built on the idea that Indivisa is a community-first editorial platform, we created a brand that provides a timeless yet forward-thinking approach to female-focused content.

A minimal and bold typographic style alongside personal touches and flourishes really brings the whole INDIVISA world together. A light-hearted, approachable identity encourages the audience to engage and participate in the women’s football scene.

The brand typefaces include Tobias, Union, and Cooper Black.

Homepage with headlines in Tobias SemiBold and intro text in Union Regular

London Underground advert with more ABC Bingo

Indivisa partnered with Adidas to create a space for the final stages of the Women’s Euros, the Indivisa HQ.

Billboard using Tobias with some letters replaced by pictograms

Detail from the website, with text in Union

Detail from the website, combining Tobias and Union

Adidas is the main sponsor of Stockholm Marathon. In conjunction with the 2022 race, Adidas wanted to pay tribute to the runners and running clubs that they work with in the form of a magazine. Together with editor and sneaker freak Carmilla Floyd, Malmsten Hellberg created a large format 32-page magazine. The publication was typeset in LL Bradford (incl. Mono) throughout and was printed in high speed heatset in Sundsvall, Sweden. It was handed out to all participants when they collected their number bib.

Source: www.morrisonhotelgallery.com Ebet Roberts. License: All Rights Reserved.

Run-DMC photographed in Hollis, Queens, New York on July 16, 1986

From Greg Calvert’s 2016 article on Beats, Rhymes & Type:

Hats, jackets, shell-toes, and chains. Run-DMC presented a striking and memorable image that resonated with America when they started releasing music in 1983. A group with such a focused identity clearly needed a logo to match. It took a few albums but they finally got one in the form of two thick red lines and six chunky letters set in Franklin Gothic Heavy — a simple visual shorthand for 80's hip-hop cool that's been remixed and rehashed as much as Milton Glaser's classic I ♥ NY campaign.

Strangely enough, the logo never appeared on a proper studio album—only singles and compilations. It did, however, appear in the background of the “Walk This Way” video, which dominated the airwaves in 1986 and successfully planted the image squarely in the public's consciousness.

Source: www.ebay.com ond1. License: All Rights Reserved.

Cover of the single “King of Rock”, Island Records (licensed from 4th & Broadway), UK, 1986
[More info on Discogs]

Sue Apfelbaum managed to track down the logo’s designer, Stephanie Nash, and interviewed her in 2013 for an article about iconic New York music logos:

Finding out who designed it… that’s tricky. Graffiti artist turned designer Cey Adams, who did the hand-lettering on Run-DMC’s self-titled debut, is often given credit by mistake. When asked, Adams responded, “To this day, nobody really knows for sure exactly who did it. But it was done by a designer in England that did the King of Rock album and the ‘You Talk Too Much’ single [in 1985].” Now the truth is out: Ashley Newton, then the head of A&R at Island Records and now the CEO of Columbia, commissioned the logo from the label’s in-house team, specifically one Stephanie Nash.

Nash, now co-principal of Michael Nash Associates, a London design studio, did not expect any individual credit. “I remember listening [to the music] and thinking how visually typographic it was,” she says via email. “Rap was very inspirational for me at that time: large, meaningful, hard-hitting words used with such power that I had not heard before.” Her choice of the typeface came about simply: “At the time we had a limited number of fonts available, and Franklin Gothic was ‘tough’ and forthright without being old-fashioned or faddish. [It’s a] good, solid, no-nonsense font. Run-DMC’s name helped in having two sets of three letters.” The fact that it’s lasted so long she attributes to MF Benton, the typeface’s designer, and the strength of Run-DMC itself. “If the same graphic had been done for a pop band, it would not have acquired the same kudos.”

Source: thekoalition.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: nostalgiaking.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Cover of the single “My Adidas” / “Peter Piper”, Profile Records (US) and London Records (UK), 1986

[More info on Discogs]

The logo first appeared on a number of singles that, if the info on Discogs is correct, appeared in 1986. It’s also reproduced on the inner sleeve of some pressings of the King of Rock album from 1985, but it’s not clear when those were issued.

If Nash really used a typeface – as opposed to custom lettering based on Franklin Gothic – it must have been an apocryphal phototype version, and not Morris F. Benton’s original design. The letterforms are wider (but not as wide as Franklin Gothic Wide), bolder (compare the counter of C), and, most strikingly, the two stems in U are equally bold. Some later applications do use off-the-shelf Franklin Gothic.

Source: www.businessoffashion.com Adidas. License: All Rights Reserved.

Off-the-shelf Franklin Gothic on a truck advertising a campaign by Adidas

Bruno Tilley, who was a member of the in-house design team at Island Records from 1980 to 1990, also claims (co-)credit. On his website, he writes:

We'd been working with RUN DMC on a campaign and a T shirt was needed. It was put together very quickly without a huge amount of thought. Again it worked so well that the band adopted it as their main logo and trademark.

Source: andscape.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Cover of the single “Walk This Way”, Profile Records (US) and London Records (UK), 1986
[More info on Discogs]

Source: www.youtube.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Still from the video for “Walk This Way”, with the logo painted on the wall. The letterforms in this version don’t match the logo, or Franklin Gothic, for that matter.

Source: www.youtube.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Another still from the video for “Walk This Way”: Steven Tyler of Aerosmith has broken through the wall that separates their rehearsal room from the neighboring studio by Run-DMC. Guitarist Joe Perry takes a peek through the hole where the U once was.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Cover for Crown Royal (2001), the final album by Run-DMC before they disbanded in November 2002. This is again off-the-shelf Franklin Gothic. [More info on Discogs]

Dan Carter: 1598 is a career celebration of the iconic All Black who is rugby’s highest-scoring player of all time.

This book exists in two editions: A regular one and a signed limited edition available to pre-order from Dan Carter’s website. It comes cloth-bound in a special slipcase, with Adidas boot lace detailing and Swiss layflat binding.

Studio South designed this book closely alongside Dan Carter and using TWK Lausanne (by Nizar Kazan) for the whole design.

Adidas Originals Workshop × Blanc turned ImaginCafé, Barcelona, into a space for experimentation and creativity where what matters most is the process and the people. Adidas and Blanc have selected a group of creative people formed by illustrators, designers and visual artists to carry out various workshops and artistic interventions in the space, under the adidas Samba concept.

Design by Gerard Marin with a custom version of Brutal.

Knif Mono has been used by Jakob Lienhard for the Kilo Kish installation at Space 15 Twenty in Los Angeles on the occasion of the release of her new EP Mothe, presented by Adidas & Urban Outfitters.

Source: www.billmcmullen.com Bill McMullen. License: All Rights Reserved.

The logo for the “New York City” series of sneakers and related streetwear designed by Bill McMullen as a special Adidas Adicolor edition for Footlocker is most likely custom. It probably started out with a font, though: Several letterforms are very similar to Disco. Especially ‘C’, ‘E’, ‘N’, and the unique ‘K’ with a split semicircle for the legs indicate it was based on this 1960s/1970s typeface, or one of its many digital interpretations.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Unmodified Outland on the left, McMullen’s logo on the right

The direct comparison with Outland, one of the better digitizations made by FontBank, Inc. in 1990–1993, demonstrates the ingenuity of McMullen’s tweaks. Gaps in the blocky setting are reduced by appending a corner to ‘W’ (aligned with the ‘R’ below) and giving the ‘Y’ a more compact lowercase form. The biform nature is further emphasized by dotting the ‘I’, a change that improves the rhythm of rounds and straights. Restoring separate counters in ‘R’ increases the legiblity and tones down the verticality So does rotating the ‘O’, which enlivens the whole thing and renders it more dynamic. Finally, the counters/bridges are opened up a bit, to prevent them from clogging up.

Source: vk.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: vk.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: vk.com License: All Rights Reserved.

The official ball of the FIFA World Cup Final match is printed with the date, location, and two contenders using FF DIN. As reader Leslie Kuo observed, perhaps this is an unfair advantage for the Germans who see some variation of this typeface every day in their home country — DIN is an industry and governmental standard.

The ball itself is Adidas’ “Brazuca”, which the company unveiled in December, 2013 and has been used throughout the World Cup. The other type found on the ball consists of the Adidas logo and AdiNeue, a custom typeface derived from that logo. AdiNeue, designed by Joancarles Casasin at BaseLab, has shades of ITC Avant Garde Gothic, Chalet, and Neuzeit Grotesk. Neuzeit? Another German advantage!

Of course, Adidas also comes from Germany, as well. So everything about the ball could be considered German.

Except for that World Cup Brazil logo and font. That’s half British. The Works Ltd, an agency in Leeds, UK, developed the identity for both the 2014 FiFA World Cup and the 2010 event in South Africa. No wonder that goofy lettering style looked familiar. Oh well, at least they have an office in São Paulo, so their work for this year’s tournament has some local legitimacy. Still, the Germans, at least, were not amused.

More World Cup coverage on Fonts In Use »