The eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed that FSE has a new website, visual identity, and logo.
Here’s why.
Website
While perfectly functional, our previous website was a bit out of date on the technical side. This new, shiny one that you’re currently browsing is a lot more user-friendly, both for visitors and administrators. As you’ll see, it allows us to host a wider range of content, including video and audio, and present information in several innovative ways.
What’s more, we’ve been able to update the structure of the site to better reflect our current work and priorities. But don’t worry: our institutional memory is safe, with a full news archive going back to 2012 (so far, we’ve imported everything from 2016 onwards) and a 2,500-word overview of FSE’s background and history. We’re also in the process of transferring the contents of the old photograph gallery to our Flickr account.
Visual Identity
When we began discussing the prospect of a new website, it was agreed that we’d need to refresh our visual identity, too.
We settled on black and white as the two principal colours because they clearly contrast, meaning they work well on accessibility grounds. They also work well with a third colour, or highlight colour, hence the green, which has always been associated with FSE.
In the future, you’ll likely notice us using a few different highlight colours—gold for Fans’ Embassies, for instance.
The font that you’re reading is called ‘Proxima Nova’, which has a low stroke contrast, making it good for readability. The logo incorporates ‘Prototype’, which is an old school font that we thought looked cool.
Logo
Speaking of which, we really wanted to avoid football clichés when it came to the logo.
We chose the floodlight motif because we thought it did just that. Our discussions focused on going to games and picking out your own stadium or an away venue through the silhouette of floodlights on the afternoon sky or their brilliant white glow during the night. More than the smell of freshly cooked bratwurst, bifanas, or meat pies, floodlights evoke the feeling of being a football fan.
You’ll also notice that we have three versions of the logo (horizontal, vertical, and circular), as well as black on white and white on black versions—that’s to make sure it can be used in as many contexts as possible.
Acknowledgements
We’d like to thank long-time FSE members Michael Fritz and Nico Appel for designing the website and logo, respectively. We greatly appreciate their skill, dedication, and patience. Thanks also go to Alex Langton and Chris Johnson.