Style combination · Contrasts

Fante Asafo Flags × Ultras Graphics

Another fighting group's cloth: the Fante company flag tells a proverb in appliquéd figures for one company, while the ultras banner states one name in painted capitals to a whole stadium.

From the research on Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)

Mix them and make something Fante Asafo Flags Ultras Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Fante Asafo Flags, their arrangement from Ultras Graphics, the finish from Ultras Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa) Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)

Type from Ultras Graphics: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Fante Asafo Flags: Flat fields
Full polychrome
Form from Fante Asafo Flags: Stylised figuration
Emblems & badges
Composition from Ultras Graphics: Repetition & rhythm
Full bleed
Surface from Ultras Graphics: Painterly brushwork
Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Ultras Graphics

Together

Big Shoulders; Ultras Graphics used The 'Ultras Liberi' genre and Set display faces enlarged and painted by hand

Text · Fante Asafo Flags

The company flags (frankaa) of the Fante asafo, the old warrior companies of Ghana's central coast, widely adopted from the mid-nineteenth century. Flag-makers cut flat silhouettes of animals, people and objects from coloured cotton and sew them onto a plain ground, often inside a border of checks or triangles, with a national flag in the upper hoist corner: a Union Jack until 1957, then Ghana's. Each flag stages one proverb, boast or taunt aimed at rival companies, and is danced, paraded and hung at the company shrine.

Archivo; Fante Asafo Flags used Embroidered block capitals and numerals naming the company and Company numbers such as 'Nº1' and 'Nº2' in a contrasting cloth or thread, set in the field or along an arm of a large cross that divides the field ('NºI' in red on the bottom arm of a wide golden-yellow cross, Flags of the World 'Crocodiles and moon' flag)

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Fante Asafo Flags, with a counter-accent from Ultras Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa) Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)

#f0e9d8 ground · 36%
#1b1b1b ink · 14%
#f2b31b accent · 18%
#c62a2f accent · 14%
#1e3a8a accent · 10%
#3a9a9a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f0e9d8;
  --ink: #1b1b1b;
  --accent-1: #f2b31b;
  --accent-2: #c62a2f;
  --accent-3: #1e3a8a;
  --accent-4: #3a9a9a;
  --font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Archivo", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa): Asafo companies are living institutions of Fante towns: each flag belongs to its company, is commissioned when a new captain takes office, is danced at festivals and members' funerals and hung at the company shrine, and its image is often a taunt aimed at a particular rival company. Do not copy a company's flag or emblem for branding, learn what a motif says as a proverb before using it, since a scene can boast or insult, and do not pass off a new flag sewn with a Union Jack as a colonial-era piece: workshops have made flags for collectors and tourists in record numbers since the mid-1990s, including new flags made to look pre-independence. Company imagery has carried political stakes: under colonial rule the British administration imposed strict regulations on asafo companies and their arts. Commission and credit Fante flag-makers' workshops rather than printing imitations.

Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo): Ultras graphics belong to living, often closed supporters' groups whose banner, name and emblem stand for the group itself, so do not lift a real group's name, logo or lettering for a brand, campaign or fashion line as if it were anonymous street style. The language carries the political baggage of both extremes of 1970s street politics: Vice and Scalcione trace the 'Ultras Liberi' lettering to French and Italian far-right lettering, and some curve, such as S.S. Lazio's Ultras (1974), are known for fascist slogans, but group names such as Commando, Brigate and Fedayn were borrowed from political marches, and many 1970s ultras came from the extra-parliamentary left, Lotta Continua above all, so the same sign can mean opposite things in two curve; check what a borrowed symbol or slogan has meant in that curva before using it. Fare's guide to discriminatory practices in European football lists the SS Totenkopf skull, Sig and Odal runes, the Wolfsangel, the Celtic cross (often in place of an 'O') and the code '88' among the far-right symbols seen in stadiums on banners, stickers and shirts: never use them, and keep a borrowed skull clearly apart from the Totenkopf, as the guide does. Nazi symbols are banned by law in Germany, Austria, Poland and other countries, and UEFA fined Germany's football association after its fans showed a neo-Nazi flag at Euro 2012. Memorial displays and murals, for the 74 dead of Port Said in 2012, 72 of them Al Ahly supporters, or the Superga air crash of 1949, are acts of mourning, not decoration. In Egypt a Cairo court banned all ultras groups in May 2015 and members have been arrested since; do not attribute new work to Egyptian ultras groups or their members. Flares and smoke are dangerous and banned in many stadiums; do not present pyrotechnics as a device to imitate.

The two styles

A stylised warrior raises a curved sword and carries a blue shield while straddling a large turquoise crocodile, with a smaller running figure to the right. A Ghanaian flag, palm tree and red sun fill the cream background, enclosed by a blue-and-yellow patterned border.

1850–present · Sub-Saharan Africa Fante Asafo Flags (Frankaa) The company flags (frankaa) of the Fante asafo, the old warrior companies of Ghana's central coast, widely adopted from the mid-nineteenth century. Flag-makers cut flat silhouettes of animals, people and objects from coloured cotton and sew them onto a plain ground, often inside a border of checks or triangles, with a national flag in the upper hoist corner: a Union Jack until 1957, then Ghana's. Each flag stages one proverb, boast or taunt aimed at rival companies, and is danced, paraded and hung at the company shrine. 1968–present · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & North Africa, Southeast Asia, North America Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo) The graphic language of Italy's organised football supporters, the ultras, from the late 1960s, and of the groups that copied them across Europe, North Africa and beyond. Each group paints its name in huge, squared, tightly packed capitals on a long cloth hung along the railing of the curva, in the club's colours alone. For big matches the whole stand becomes one picture of cards, flags, smoke and giant painted sheets, and one-colour stickers and murals carry the same names, skulls and borrowed pop icons into the city.

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