Touring Exhibition Slots available in 2024 and 2025
Football: Designing the Beautiful Game touring exhibition
Whether you are a fanatical fan, side-line supporter or sporting sceptic, visitors to this exhibition will enjoy discovering the remarkable design stories behind the world's beautiful game.
#DesigningFootball
Football: Designing the Beautiful Game is the first major exhibition that explores the story behind football, unpicking how design has been used to push the game to new limits.
Take a journey through more than 500 objects, films and interviews in sporting performance, kit development, stadium design and more and immerse yourself in iconic football moments with star objects telling the stories of club legacies and game legends such as Messi, Pelé, George Best and Diego Maradona and more.
Football is unquestionably the world’s most popular sport, with a dedicated fan base and truly international reach. It is estimated that more than half the population of the planet - around 3.5 billion people - watched part of the FIFA World Cup in 2018.
This exhibition reveals the master-planning of the world’s most significant football stadiums, the design innovation used in today’s boots, how the graphic design of team badges, kits and posters shape a club's identity and how grassroots initiatives are pushing back against the sport’s commercialisation.
You will glimpse a rare insight into the people and processes that have made football what it is today.
The exhibition was produced in partnership with the National Football Museum in Manchester.
'A winning combination of style and substance.'
★★★★ Evening Standard
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'Tells the story of how design has not only influenced the sport, but how the sport has influenced wider design.'
★★★★ The Telegraph
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'This is a show that captures the thrills, pain and zeal of a game that grips us in our billions.'
★★★★ The Times
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'Unearths fascinating artefacts and restores the long history of women’s football.'
Financial Times
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'A wonderful reminder of why football is still a magical game'
i Newspaper
Celebrating the beautiful game
To celebrate the exhibition, Arsenal legend Ray Parlour goes head-to-head with world champion freestyler Andrew Henderson to answer the question: ‘Is today’s football kit really better than its past designs?’ From free-kicks to dribbling, the pair faced a series of challenges to see how kit from the 1920s compare to today’s designs.
Former professional footballer Gary Lineker visits our exhibition with the Design Museum director Tim Marlow and recounts some anecdotes behind some of the objects on display.
Partners
The National Football Museum originally opened in Preston in 2001. After investment from the European Regional Development Fund, the museum opened in Manchester in July 2012 and has played host to a range of popular and thought-provoking exhibitions celebrating football’s role and impact in wider society.
For more information on this touring exhibition, contact the Touring team by completing the tour enquiries form.
Exhibition 3D Design: OMMX
Exhibition 2D Design: Shaz Madani
Marketing Campaign Identity: Maker Motel | Designer: Alistair Ager
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