La Liga jerseys (2017–)
9 February 2019. Álvaro Morata looks a little lost in his home stadium in the Madrid derby against Real, who won 1-3.
Starting with the 2017/2018 season, all teams in La Liga (“La Liga Santander” for men, and the women’s league “Liga Iberdrola”) use a custom version of Akhand Bold, designed by Satya Rajpurohit and released at Indian Type Foundry 2015. This post shows a selection of jerseys as used by different teams in the 2018–19 season.
The concept of a standardised typeface for numbers and player names is not new. The Premier League introduced a custom typeface by Sporting iD in 2017. In both cases, the brand typeface is only applied in the club competition. The clubs will use a different typeface on their shirts for e.g. the Champions League (which provides the business opportunity of selling extra kits to the fans).
Apparently, the guidelines do allow for subtle colour variation and modification of the typeface. For instance, Real Madrid (second image) and Huesca (third image) both use an all-black version on their shirts, but the Madrid shirt numbers have a heavier shadow; FC Barcelona applied a halftone/mesh effect to their numbers. The shadow effects in the players’ names will not be visible for spectators from a distance, but it is probably safe to assume that most shirts with “Jordi Alba” or “Griezmann” will be seen up close, worn by fans.
20 August 2018. Nacho, Bale and Marcelo in the opening match of La Liga 2018-19 (against Getafe, 2-0).
25 September 2018. Match between Atletico de Madrid (striped shirts) and Huesca (white). The guidelines obviously do not forbid sponsor logos outside the designated area for names and numbers.
2 February 2019. FC Bacelona’s Lionel Messi gets a hug after scoring one of his two goals against CF Valencia. Shirt numbers with mesh effect, paired with names set in solid letters.
9 September 2018. The women’s squad of Levante U.D. celebrate the winning 1-0 goal in their match against Rayo Vallecano.
1 Comment on “La Liga jerseys (2017–)”
As noted by Sports Fonts, the diacritics are below par, a common fault in jersey typefaces. Shown above the shirt is Akhand with its default tilde which is fine. Why didn’t the designers simply use it?