Design Considered #06
Slimmer Summer Edition (2 of 3) - Simply Football, Venice and Fine Design.
#01 - Opening Thought
The Spanish and the English might have the most to shout about at Sunday’s Euros Final, but many more of us across Europe became armchair football pundits this summer. From a design perspective, however, there’s been little to discuss beyond a colourful cast of ‘ball plinths’ and the England kit’s controversial reinterpretation of St George’s Cross.
This is a shame, as football jerseys can be a creative canvas to illustrate a country or city’s home spirit, characteristics, legacy and ambitions. If you feel this statement is a stretch, you may want to consider the work of the Munich design agency Bureau Borsche, led by Mirko Borsche. The studio has become respected in sporting and fashion arenas for kit design that leaves a lasting impression beyond the pitch.
“Venezia FC was not really celebrated beyond Venice before we started working with them,” Borsche tells Design Considered, discussing his firm’s commission to update the Italian city’s then-second division (now first division) team kit for the 22-23 season. “We said - we’ll just design a super beautiful kit. We had the City of Venice as the team sponsor, and the goal was to almost create a souvenir for this amazing place, better than buying a cheap Venetian mask or model gondola.” With freedom from the team (backed by ambitious ownership) to embrace design cues from the world’s most picturesque city, the Kappa kits made a global splash. According to Esquire, some 96% of kit sales went to foreign buyers.
Borsche adds that success in football uniform design comes from embracing the culture of a place and its team while avoiding clichés. For the Venezia FC 23-24 season kits, this meant walking a fine line with an away option featuring gorgeous gondolier navy hoops and rich red collars. “The Venetian people are so proud of their city, and for us to come in as Germans designing a kit inspired by gondoliers with red collars - it was very scary,” says Borsche. “It’s like us as Bavarians seeing Australians trying to get the Oktoberfest outfits right in October - it can get very ugly!” However, through tasteful design and embracing Venetian citizens in the uniform’s creative campaigns, the results have been loved by locals and foreigners alike.
After all, Bureau Borsche knows what it’s doing when it comes to design around culture, having worked successfully with myriad brands from Balenciaga to the Bavarian State Opera. “We’ve really made an effort to include the people of Venice in the campaigns,” Borsche adds, noting that part of the effort involved capturing one of Venice’s most iconic barmen on his boat, coolly riding through the canals. “We’ve taken a fashion perspective for the campaigns, and it has worked, attracting the likes of Highsnobiety and Hypebeast.”
The fashion-led approach has buoyed the success of tasteful designs for football teams far beyond the canal city. Bureau Borsche has recently worked on Nike kits with Bern’s BSC Young Boys (pictured below), with elements inspired by the iconography of the Swiss capital’s famous clocktower. The studio has also designed Kappa kits for Athens Kallithea FC (pictured at the bottom of the article) alongside a fresh identity. It also updated the visual identity and logo of Italian giants Inter Milan in 2021.
Mirko Borsche’s next move is the launch of Societas, a new company founded just weeks ago, which continues his team’s mission to elevate football kit design from the top flights to local Sunday leagues. Societas produces custom jerseys and uniforms for smaller sports teams, allowing them to choose quality materials, cuts, and designs. The focus is on well-made jerseys that fans can wear for years, including more form-fitting sizes (because we’re not all built like Mbappe) and popular long-sleeve options. “We want clubs to come to us with their designs, and we make them happy,” explains Borsche, noting he wants Societas to inspire other graphic designers to flex their prowess on the kits it produces. “If they want to do something special for their club, we want to make it happen.”
#02 - For Your Consideration
I’m a little late to the party here (the Homecraft Designer platform has 3.4m followers). Still, for someone who has been writing about ‘good design’ for a decade yet wouldn’t know where to start when it comes to actually ‘designing’ an interior space himself, the channel’s ‘how-to’ clips offer endless inspiration. I’m particularly excited by the space-saving laundry redesign.
Slightly more stunning visuals can be found on the recently updated Alvar Aalto Route website, featuring a beautiful film portraying all the Alvar Aalto projects worth visiting this summer.
While some in the design industry are starting to save for the astronomical costs of attending the Salone del Mobile event in Milan next April, others are making their way up to a different type of Salone experience this weekend. Salone di Aschau in the Bavarian Alps offers “a place to discover new experimental designs, unpublished prototypes, and unique collectables that embrace flaws, quirkiness, and the absurd”.
Euros withstanding, an English effort that everyone should support is property listing favourite The Modern House, currently advertising one of London’s most amazing modernist dwellings. Ted Cullinan’s former family home has a distinctly Japanese feel with its timber trimmings and a design that channels immense amounts of natural light into the home, a luxury few in space-starved London are fortunate to live with.
Finally, this week, I spent a solid 10 minutes trying to install a virtual opportunity to become an IKEA store employee and another 10 participating in this bizarre simulator. While I know I exceeded digital management’s expectations, I wasn’t enticed to apply for a job on the physical showroom floor after playing ‘The Co-Worker’. The game is part of a Mother London campaign, an interesting way for the innovative mega-design brand (known as a good employer) to attract young talent.
#03 - Design Selection
Simple forms and heat-beating devices mark our second summer design round-up this week, kicking off with the made-to-order (1) Side Table 001 from Barcelona’s Mesura in a smooth green lacquered MDF. Keeping things well-rounded, it’s incredible to believe that the (2) Colonna tableware set from Ginori 1735 was designed 70 years ago by maestro Gio Ponto’s model maker Giovanni Gariboldi in 1954. However, we’re glad it’s still available to buy in the guise of the Colonna Re-Edition. A much newer classic comes from Swedish lighting brand Wästberg and is designed by Sir David Chipperfield. The portable (3) w241 Faro hybrid lamp is produced in various tasteful colours and has a smart brushed aluminium option. It’s also now available to buy after launching earlier this year. Even more portable is the easy, breezy, and very affordable (4) Rechargeable Hand Held fan from Muji, which doubles up as a mini desk fan when folded into form. Something a bit more robust can be appreciated in the handsomely rounded timber body of Zanat’s (5) Bunna Chair, designed by Japan’s Naoto Fukasawa. It features a delicately hand-carved seat shaped in Bosnia. Finishing up with a rarer commodity, Reinhold Weiss’ minimalistic designed (6) HL 1 desk fans crop up every now and again in vintage shops and eBay. The 1960s work from Dieter Rams’ contemporary doesn’t need decent weather to be a well-appreciated addition to your home.