We’ve all been caught up this last month with World Cup fever gripping many of us. So, if you’re feeling any withdrawal from the lack of the beautiful game on TV, take a look at these stunning football illustrations on Dezeen.
The Smart Cow team loved the ‘Football Atlas’ illustrations by Michael Raisch featuring a series of maps of countries competing in the World Cup, with colourful murals of key players adorned across their own country. This series has a vast array of drawings ranging from Harry Kane – our very own golden boot winner, to Lionel Messi of Argentina and Paul Pogba, France. It’s as if the lines of the maps have taken life of their own to create the players image which feature a wash of colour to depict the respective football kit or flag.
We loved the style of this portfolio, however one particular map that stood out was the Iranian illustration – it did not feature a star player but instead focussed on its female fans. This was not only a record-breaking World Cup in terms of penalties given and the least 0-0 matches occurring, but it was also historic for Iranian women football fans, as they are not permitted to attend stadiums in their home country. This made Raisch’s illustration of these female fans perfectly express what was most important about the World Cup – equality for all fans to enjoy the tournament, truly emanating the spirit of the game.
What we also liked about this project is that it wasn’t purely focussed on the ‘big teams’. Raisch made sure to create drawings of almost all the countries in this years World Cup, from South Korea through to Iceland and Senegal to name a few. This for us represented the fact that anything can happen with all teams having as much chance of doing well – especially seen this year with Croatia (much to our great contempt) qualifying for their very first final!