JD Sports
Bringing JD Sports’ energy and momentum to life through a unique modification of F37 Judge.
ADVERTISING
ITALIC ANGLE
About
From its roots in the North-West of England, JD Sports has grown into an industry-leading sports fashion retailer with a global presence. The brand is bold and energetic, speaking to a diverse and fashion-conscious audience worldwide. Known for pushing boundaries in sports fashion, JD blends global influence with a distinct streetwear attitude.
The opening of their biggest ever store at the Trafford Centre in Manchester, UK, not far from their hometown of Bury, was due around the same time as this project was completed. This marked a key moment in the brand’s ongoing evolution and showed their respect for their Northern roots.
APPLICATIONS
The Brief
We were contacted by creative studio, Uncommon, to design a modified version of the Judge Condensed font for JD Sports. The aim was to create a font family with seamless multilingual support, along with seven language-specific logo lockups for the ‘Forever Forward’ campaign. The result needed to feel distinct and confident, aligning perfectly with the brand’s ethos and enabling them to communicate with a global audience.
Global lockups
F37® understood exactly what we needed and the process was great from start to finish. They delivered a typeface that felt bold, energetic and truly global. The font captures the spirit of JD Sports and gives us a confident and consistent voice across every platform and in every language.
Adam Bond, JD Sports Associate Studio Director
Digital
Delivery
The font family for JD Sports is a modified version of F37 Judge Condensed. JD wanted an impactful sans-serif with enough personality to capture the sense of movement that has defined the brand from the very start. F37 Judge was selected as the perfect starting point for this journey, thanks to its bold, condensed forms and confident, modern character.
We made key adjustments to the font, like increasing the italic angle to 10° to match the slant of the JD Sports logo. We refined the crossbar alignments on letters such as E, F, G, H, P and R to improve visual alignment and create a more balanced appearance. Additionally, the tail of the Q was squared off, giving it a cleaner and more assertive finish.
The font supports Latin, Greek and Arabic scripts, covering over 300 languages worldwide. We also created seven language-specific logo lockups for their ‘Forever Forward’ campaign to help them continue to speak to audiences globally.
The result is a robust typographic system that performs across multiple channels and languages, from the Trafford Centre all the way to the corners of the world. The font is a true reflection of a brand always moving Forever Forward.
