Tottenham Hotspur

Founded in 1882, Spurs live by their famous motto “To Dare Is To Do” – a promise to pursue their own path, and win with flair and style. They built a futuristic new stadium in 2019. It’s the third largest in the UK, featuring the world's first dividing, retractable football pitch, that transforms the Stadium into a multi-purpose venue for NFL games, F1 go-karting, concerts and more. Though much-loved, their brand typography felt out of step with the new, modern Spurs, so it was time for a revamp.

We were briefed by London branding studio Nomad to create a new, flexible, exciting family of typefaces that retained the spirit of the club’s existing 20-year-old font, TH Caps. There were two parts to the task: first, a set of all-caps display fonts; second, a workhorse upper- and lower-case full Latin text font with italics. Importantly, these needed to be designed as different styles of the same typeface.

Our starting point was to use Nomad’s unifying club philosophy, along with shapes from the club cockerel, to give us direction.

This inspired us to introduce interesting new design details to the modified display face, making it sharper in places to mimic the point of the beak and spur, as well as the curve of the tail where appropriate.

We removed some flicks and rounded corners, sharpened various joins, added serifs, and redrew parts we felt weren’t working.

As part of the process, we created many new widths and slants — both forwards and backwards. We also developed several options for each glyph, with some becoming the standard and others forming alternate sets within the font. Additionally, we created a series of ligatures, which were included in the package.

And we developed a wide range of ligatures that bring new craft and dynamism to the typeface, adding interest and individuality to the compelling new visual aesthetic.

Overall, the new display font looks more modern, edgy, and streamlined. It feels like a sharp, fitted suit rather than a slightly baggy tracksuit.

The custom text style takes many typographic cues from the new display design, but it is more restrained and pared back. Legibility and versatility were key, though the original character still shines through. In essence, it’s a slightly condensed, old-style flared serif with an upright posture, sharp flicks, and soft connections.

Both sides of the family fully express the Spurs philosophy. We were dared to come up with an electrifying typeface, and we did.