Football Programme Covers - Old Football Programmes

Near the football museum was a small shop which sold old football programmes. We picked up some from the 4 teams we're using in our own designs from between 1985 and 2015, as well a Leicester City one from 1978 and a Bristol City one from 1984 which share the same layout.

Leicester City - 25th March 1978

Bristol City - 13th March 1984

Everton - 26th December 1985

Liverpool - 9th December 1989

Sheffield United - 26th February 1991

Sheffield Wednesday - 26th October 1991

Sheffield Wednesday - 8th October 1994

Sheffield United - 22nd January 2000

Everton - 8th April 2001

Sheffield Wednesday - 1st March 2003

Everton - 22nd February 2015

Sheffield United - 12th September 2015

Size

The majority of the programmes were 165mm x 240mm regardless of there time period, however, the 2015 Sheffield United programme - the most recent one we have, is 145mm x 210mm, making it more commercially viable due to how two pages can be printed on A4 rather than one, lowering the printing costs. For this reason I'll be suggesting that our programme designs are designed for 145mm x 210mm with large bleeds so that scaling them up will cause us minimal problems.

Advertising

The programme covers since 1994 don't adverts on them with the exception of Everton's 2001 programme (which will have been hastily produced due to a limited production time due to the game in question being a cup game rather than a league game), which makes it easier for Joe and I to plan our own covers, as we don't have to leave space for adverts.

Typography

There seems to be no consistency in typography across the titles of the programmes, which leaves us pretty much unrestricted, although I would question the typography of most of them - the ones which look moss appropriate are Everton's 1985, Sheffield Wednesday's from 2003, and Sheffield United's from 2015, the latter two of which are fairly similar. This should probably be an indication of how our text should look.

Layouts

Sketching the layouts of the back covers shows how the programmes have shifted away from have symmetrical grids, prioritising having more information on the back over the traditional format of having the squad lists laid out symmetrically next to each other in the space that isn't taken up by advertising or big pictures. The shift towards the need to include lots of information is an important consideration.