Design Assembly

It’s that time of year again, when hundreds of thousands flock to south west London for the world’s most famous lawn tennis championship, and for the first time in my life, I made the impromptu decision to go along on a day off and queue up with thousands of others to try and get in.

One thing’s for sure it is a fantastically well run event, from the moment we joined the queue mid-way through Wimbledon Park at 3pm, to the moment we entered the gates at 6:30pm, every possible detail had been carefully considered. For starters there were the installations at Wimbledon and Southfield’s Underground stations to admire, bringing forward the excitement and anticipation of arriving at the club for the thousands of spectators.

Platform at Southfields Underground station

Then, there was the ‘hall of fame’ snapshot of the tournaments history halfway through the queue on Wimbledon Park golf course, keeping the waiting public entertained. A specially commissioned typeface was used to glue the elements together, adding a sense of humour and character to the event – though how many other people picked up on the carefully crafted letterforms remains to be seen.

Detail of typeface used on the boards

Once inside Wimbledon this graphic style gave way for a more predictable, ‘quintessentially British’ style of way-finding signage and literature, but it was then that I noticed the most prominent image that stuck in my mind from the day. It wasn’t the hundreds of spectators watching Murray play on the big screen, nor was it the huge queue of people waiting for ticket returns for one of the feature courts, it was actually the ball boy/girl’s uniform of all things.

Unbeknown to me, back in 2006 Ralph Lauren signed a £5.4m, 5 year sponsorship deal, becoming the first external company in 129 years to supply outfits for the ball boys/girls and umpires of Wimbledon. I suppose it highlights how little attention I’ve paid to the competition over the past few years, but the branding on the dark blue polo shirts was so big, and so prominent that I couldn’t help but notice them this time around.

Wimbledon staff uniform 2009. Image taken from Ralph Lauren website.

Back in 2006, Wimbledon were in the midst of a dispute with Adidas about their branding on some of the player’s uniforms, so in a carefully worded press release the new Ralph Lauren branding’s size and prominence was defended, saying that it complied to the official guidelines of 3 inches square and the fact that it wasn’t a British sports manufacturer simply highlighted the global nature of the tournament.

Now I maybe wrong, but the 2009 shirts look to feature the famous polo player logo at more like the 4 or 5 inches that appear on the American tennis tournaments uniforms, and in a colour which gives them the maximum prominence and stand out.

Part of me says hats off to Ralph Lauren, as sponsorship deals go, it’s not a massive amount of money to have paid for such a prestigious piece of brand alignment – certainly when you think about it in relation to various other leading sporting event deals.

The other part of me wonders why there weren’t any leading British companies looking to secure such a deal, with what is known internationally as the ‘All England Club’. It might be short-sighted of me to suggest, but Paul Smith and Fred Perry are just two British brands which spring to mind that surely would have aligned themselves well? Perhaps there were companies like these in the running, and the organisers did want to promote the international aspect of the competition (as they mentioned in their press release).

For me though, it is essentially an ‘all American’ clothing brand creating a faux British look, which feels a little uncomfortable. It’ll be interesting to see who takes over from RL when the contract is up for renewal in two years time.