Everyday Art Directing for Xbox’s ‘Everyday Tactician’

Xbox’s ‘Everyday Tactician’ has picked up a load of awards already this summer. 

In my slightly biassed opinion, it deserves every accolade it has received – rewarding all the hard work put in by the creatives, the director, the editor, and the army of people that helped will it into life.

‘The Everyday Tactician’ — a competition run by Xbox and Football Manager to win a real-life tactician job at National League side, Bromley FC — had been set up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Football Manager game. The winner, Nathan Owolabi, worked closely with Bromley’s coaching staff to provide both tactical suggestions and learn on the job, leading to promotion to the football league for the first time in the club’s 132-year history.

What was brilliant was that it swerved traditional advertising and told an incredible story, complete with a fairytale ending.

My role was working with the creative team [at McCann London, before I moved to Saatchi & Saatchi]; getting the whole thing branded, and creating a world around it that enhanced the storytelling, without assaulting the viewers’ senses. The art direction and design challenges were varied. The main issue being budget. There simply wasn’t a huge pot to spend. This meant lots of stolen hours, some nights, and weekend work that wasn’t billed. But seeing the opportunity, everyone went the extra mile(s) - the potential felt huge even early on.

Due to the lack of budget, we had to be precise with what we executed.

There is an existing look to Xbox – the headline font is Gotham Bold Italic, paired with a colour scheme of grey/black, white, and luminous green, which is used on much of their comms. This meant that the foundations were pretty set, however, how it was applied turned out to be more varied that we anticipated. 

The Everyday logo was one of the first pieces to be designed – it was needed early on for the job advert and to sell into the client. The designer who worked on this, again, didn’t have much time, and went through many iterations with just the font and colour scheme to work with. However much of what was in that logo was the basis for the graphic world that followed.

The next step was to build out from the font – incorporating more weights from the font family and spacing the tracking wider – this was to enhance the ‘techy’ feel. It was important to show the game without showing the game. Football Manager has its own branding, and mashing that together with Xbox’s would have been a bit of a mess.

The next way we could show the game was to use the visual language of tactics – something that was started in the logo. 

Circles with arrows, abbreviations for positions – like FW (forward) DEF (defender), and line drawings of a football were all brought together to build a bank of what is essentially data. We spoke to Nathan extensively about what he used in the game, and what he saw would work for Bromley in real life. Using this, we pieced together layouts based on this information. It was a bit of trial and error. Early on we found that if we copied the game graphics exactly, and put them onto a printed page, it didn’t work - the background of Football Manager is black, and the content is white. This is impractical in print – it uses a lot of ink for one (expensive). And it makes it feel very flat – CMYK flattens these colours as opposed to RGB on screens. A breakthrough was flipping these colours – content black, background white. This instantly made it feel more real world and tactile – like someone was drawing them on a board and showing the players where to run and pass.

Using the tactics from Nathan, we teased the campaign in the form of ads placed in matchday programs at Bromley games, as well as fly posters around the ground. This was brilliant, as it was advertising that didn’t look like advertising. Supporters or Bromley as well as opposition supporters engaged with it, discussing with their friends and fellow supporters what the right thing to do was or if Bromley knew too much about them.

The next challenge was carrying this visual language into the documentary.

This was tricky as the films were driven by incredible storytelling and emotion - something tactics aren’t particularly known to be. However, binding together the look and feel of the tactics posters and the films was obviously important for consistency and attribution. 

Using the bank of formations and graphics created for the posters, we incorporated this into the documentary where they were relevant, and having to be quite ruthless where they weren’t. It was so important not to saturate the films with lines, marker pen and jargon that didn’t make sense – they were used sparingly. The opening titles used some of them, the teaser used a bit more. The titles for names and tactical positions were the same. Then a selection of the different graphics was sprinkled over the documentaries to elevate the films.

We also flipped back to using black backgrounds and white type. This helped reference the game. And give a techy feel. Being on screen the RGB gave the black a brightness too. It was a lesson showing that so long as the foundations of a brand are adhered too, then changing those colours wasn’t a misstep. When seen altogether, the work is tight as a set.

However, the thing that really binds the print work to the films is the textures. As said in the teaser, the budget of the Vanarama league is £1.5 million. The budget of the Premiership is £1.5 billion with a B. We needed to convey the realness and ‘everyday-ness’ of Bromley. It is supported by a local community that you can touch and access easily, without being on waiting lists and paying loads for tickets. There are print textures through the print work, along with hand drawn highlighter pen, showing the human side to the tactics. Then in the films you can see the same pen marks complimented by shots using what looks like a 90s handheld camera; shooting intimate moments between the staff discussing tactics, showing emotions that come out by winning, losing and being in it together. The success of this project lies in the authenticity of the execution – ‘everyday’ flows through it from start to end.

The last piece of this project was the award submissions.

We spent just as much time crafting our boards and case film as we did for the actual work. Again, being ruthless with what we did and didn’t show, and making sure every graphic was there to enhance, not distract.

A final word on this project. The branding and execution are unbelievably tight. And I am so proud of everyone that has touched this work. As I said at the start, every accolade is deserved. However, it would not have happened without the most dramatic story that Bromley and Nathan told us. Getting Nathan into a position where he has thrived, along with Bromley FC winning the way they did has made the work exceptional, and their success along with the reception the project has received is incredibly satisfying.

Above: The Everyday Tactician Episode 1