In bringing together a love of the game, appreciation of football culture and the talent of visual communication, George Woodger took to print to create a 'Half Time' final year uni project.
From the same hymn sheet or moreover, stood on the same terrace - It's a strong piece of work that looks at the creative and design culture of football. Football is a place so blessed with design, it's often the finer detail that goes under the radar. Every team has a crest or badge that contains a design story, every pitch is marked out with utter precision and that's before you even scratch the surface.
For this project, George set himself the task of creating a football magazine that takes in these rather acute angles of the game. The charm of the corner arc if you will, it's all about those things that are ever present, at the heart of the game but often go unnoticed. Beautifully so, too.
In getting a glimpse further into the project we caught up with George to get his thoughts.
What inspired the project?
I strongly feel there's a new generation of football fans. Personally in the creative world I didn’t feel there was a huge amount of content throughout print and web that I could relate too, Soccer Bible was one of the only publications that really stood out for me. I decided to use the project as a platform to start my own. Studying Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins opened up such an amazing world of creativity. The college has strong links with fashion and design and this was an inspiring source of vision and originality. A huge amount of inspiration was also taken from lifestyle magazines such as ‘Another Man’, ‘The Mr.Porter Paper Back’ and ‘Cereal Magazine’. There was a strong emphasis to produce Half-Time as a high end football magazine.
Football culture is in a beautiful place, could you describe your relationship with the game?
Football has been such a huge part of my life. Growing up as Man Utd fan, me and my two brothers were lucky enough to visit Old Trafford a couple of times a year with my dad who had a season ticket. I have very fond memories of the late 90’s/early 2000 United kits growing up, visiting the Old Trafford megastore as a kid was also a bit special! Growing up in this environment has definitely had an huge impact on me. For Half-Time I wanted to celebrate how design and creativity has accompanied so many of the iconic moments and offer an alternative insight into the game. For this project I was lucky enough to combine my two biggest passions, football and design, and I loved every second of it.
Having recently graduated, is football where you aspire to carve out a career?
I would be a dream to have a career that somehow involved the game, it’s something that I'm hoping to achieve one day. Studying in London allowed me to meet so many young creatives who also have such a passion for the sport, there are a lot of plans to collaborate in the future. I would love to continue working on Half Time, It was such an exciting project to work on. There are already so many plans and ideas for issue no.2 that I can’t wait to start working on.
Hats off to him, great taste.
