Readers of The Sun love football and the 2018 World Cup represented a great chance to engage with those readers around a tournament they’d be really invested in.

The Sun wanted to be the home of real fans for the 2018 World Cup, getting them excited about the 2018 World Cup and the England national team, all the while using The Sun’s unique tone.

This project was part of the newspaper’s ‘We’re World Cup For It’ campaign that ran in June and July 2018.

Football is hugely relevant to The Sun newspaper and its target audience, who are, overwhelmingly, supporters of the England national team.

To answer the brief, we decided to create an address to the nation. The Sun is famous for its puns so, tasked with making maximum use of The Sun’s unique tone, we used the names of England players past and present (including the entire current team) as puns within our copy.

To dovetail with the rousing theme, the copy would take the form of the St George’s cross flag.

The typography was designed as a St George’s cross flag.

We experimented with screenprinting and letterpress processes but decided to use computer design to take elements of both and maintain the simplicity of the idea.

The resulting cover wrap was perfectly timed for maximum cultural impact, reaching the audience on Saturday, July 7, the day of England’s quarter final game against Sweden.

On the day the paper with the cover wrap was on sale, the flag was discussed at length on the BBC’s breakfast news show which has a typical audience of around 1.5 million. The presenters loved it and called it ‘puntastic’.

We created a 90 second film as part of our ‘We’re World Cup for it’ campaign for The Sun’s coverage of the 2018 World Cup. In the film, an impromptu office football match breaks out and quickly turns into absolute chaos.