| Summary FC Weirdo New designs Prince Letters Champ
 Goal | | Names on sports shirts are always printed apart from shirt numbers. Most of the times they are displayed above the number. Furthermore, the size is much smaller; numbers measure about 25 cm. in height and names about 6 cm. Consequently the typeface used for names doesn't have to be the same as that used for the numbers. The letters I designed are related to the numbers of Prince, but the stroke contrast is minimized: in the letters all strokes seem to have the same weight, while the numbers have a visible stroke contrast. The width of the letters is relatively small, for the practical reason that long names have to fit on the shirt. But in the mean time a short name must look nice. This problem was illustrated by the team of PSV (Eindhoven, Netherlands) in 2004-2005, with a player named LEE as well as one named VENNEGOOR OF HESSELINK. In this case the exceptionally long name was horizontally squeezed. Partly, this problem can be solved by designing a typeface that has a regular version, but also a condensed one and an extra condensed. But extra condensed typefaces are difficult to read, so I would plead for a maximum length of player's names of, let's say, ten characters. As a conseqeunce Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink would have to choose to just use VENNEGOOR. Or he should - just as many Brazilian players - play with his first name on his back instead of his last name. An alternative could be to use his nickname LANGE JAN. A Dutch predecessor for this approch is Giovanni van Bronkhorst, who plays with the name GIO on his back. | | |