A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

Creative Direction and Design

My first job was to find a theme that could carry the key art for the whole series. We showed several routes, and the one that won was the football sticker book. Everyone remembers swapping doubles in the playground, and turning a panel of grown men into collectable cards felt right straight away. Each regular got a blue card. James Corden, hosting the opening episodes, got a red one so he’d stand out on the page, which he was happy about.

This series had a different host almost every episode, so the red card kept changing hands. After Corden came Romesh Ranganathan, then David Walliams, Amanda Holden and Clare Balding, then Romesh again, then Freddie Flintoff and Jack Whitehall. Every host needed their own card, so every host needed their own shoot. We photographed each of them individually and kept the lighting, crop and expression consistent so the full set would sit together like a proper album.

The shoots were a lot of fun. Everyone arrived in great form, including the hosts we shot weeks after the first session. We brought props for each card to give the photos some life, and nobody needed persuading to use them. We came away with far more good shots than we could ever use, which is the best problem a shoot can have.

Here you’ll find the final key art, a selection of the shoot selects and a few scamps from the original proposed routes.