The names of the Man City stars on the Champions League jerseys in a new font

In a move no one expected, Premier League champions Manchester City have unveiled their own custom font that will be used on their shirts for the 2024–25 season.

The font was developed in collaboration with musician Noel Gallagher, formerly of Oasis and also happens to be a lifelong City superfan. The design is based on Gallagher’s handwriting and will be used next season to mark the players’ names and numbers.

It started with Gallagher writing down the name and number of every first-team player, which in turn was converted into a bespoke font used on the new City shirts.

It is certainly distinctive, but is strongly reminiscent of the dreaded Comic Sans.

Man City unveiled their new home kit for the 2024/25 season last month in the final stretch of last season, on the same day as title rivals Arsenal. The season ended with City winning the English league title for a record fourth time in a row on the final day of the season.

The design of the jersey by manufacturer Puma features the local telephone code “0161” for the city of Manchester, woven into the details and decorations.

The new kit will be worn in the hand-drawn font by the men’s team at every Champions League and domestic cup match next season. However, it will not be seen in the Premier League as rules require clubs to choose their kit lettering and numbering from a range of pre-approved style and colour combinations introduced last summer.

Many major clubs are developing new custom fonts for their official match shirts, with Real Madrid recently introducing a brand new Arabesque font style to adorn its new pristine white home shirt for the 2024/25 season.

Several national teams have also developed unique lettering to accompany the new uniforms, albeit with varying degrees of success.

City striker Erling Haaland’s Norwegian national team caused a bit of a stir last year when they unveiled a bold font inspired by ancient Nordic runes for their 2024 kits.

Although the numbers and letters look amazing on their own, they are difficult to read from more than a few meters away, especially when the players are running around in the jerseys, attending to a real football match.

But why let an otherwise beautiful, creative piece of design be ruined by the fact that a font is barely legible?