Style combination · Contrasts

European Heraldry × Ultras Graphics

Both raise colours and emblems over a fighting company, but heraldry codifies one bearer's arms by rule, while a curva borrows the city's arms, a skull or a film villain for one afternoon and paints it the size of a stand; choose between a fixed blazon and a crowd-made, temporary emblem.

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

Mix them and make something European Heraldry Ultras Graphics

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from European Heraldry, their arrangement from European Heraldry, 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.

European Heraldry Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)

Type from Ultras Graphics: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from Ultras Graphics: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from European Heraldry: Stylised figuration
Emblems & badges
Composition from European Heraldry: Central symmetry
Isolated object
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

Ours

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

Text · European Heraldry

The hereditary identifying devices of medieval Europe's knights and seals, codified into a rule-bound grammar still used by states, cities, churches, universities and families. A coat of arms is defined by its written blazon, not by a drawing: a few flat tinctures (two metals, five colours and the furs) that keep metal off metal and colour off colour, a shield divided by bold ordinaries, and stylised charges in fixed poses, redrawn by every age in its own idiom and combined by impalement and quartering.

Libre Caslon Text; European Heraldry used Gothic book and cursive hands naming the bearer above or beside each shield in medieval rolls of arms and armorials, as 'die coninc van denmarke' beside the Danish flag in the Gelre Armorial and Mottoes lettered on a scroll beneath the shield

The colours

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

European Heraldry Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)

#f4f1ea ground · 36%
#141414 ink · 14%
#f2b705 accent · 18%
#c8102e accent · 14%
#1d3c8f accent · 10%
#1f7a3e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f4f1ea;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #f2b705;
  --accent-2: #c8102e;
  --accent-3: #1d3c8f;
  --accent-4: #1f7a3e;
  --font-display: "Big Shoulders", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}

Use it with care

European Heraldry: A coat of arms belongs to a particular bearer, lineage or (in Polish heraldry) clan, not to everyone with a surname: in Scotland it can belong to only one person at a time and the Court of the Lord Lyon can fine those who usurp arms and have the offending items removed or destroyed, state arms are protected against unauthorised registration and use as trademarks under Article 6ter of the Paris Convention, and many European cities and universities protect their arms as trademarks. Design new arms by the rules of the tradition rather than copying a real family's, city's or state's arms for decoration or branding, and do not present invented arms as a family's historic coat of arms. Crusader and Templar shields and knights with crosses on their chests or shields have also become far-right insignia (Charlottesville 2017, the US Capitol 2021), and neo-Nazis use an eagle loosely based on German coats of arms, though not every eagle derives from it; check how a cross, an eagle or a crusading knight will read before using it, and avoid pairing them with militant or ethnic-nationalist themes.

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

An ornate coat of arms shows two golden stags supporting a shield with a green oak tree, blue waves, and three gold stars. A knight’s helmet and large star crown the shield, surrounded by green and gold foliage, a red patterned border, and a cream scroll reading “BRIGHTER LANDS.”

c. 1140–present · Western Europe, Central Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe European Heraldry The hereditary identifying devices of medieval Europe's knights and seals, codified into a rule-bound grammar still used by states, cities, churches, universities and families. A coat of arms is defined by its written blazon, not by a drawing: a few flat tinctures (two metals, five colours and the furs) that keep metal off metal and colour off colour, a shield divided by bold ordinaries, and stylised charges in fixed poses, redrawn by every age in its own idiom and combined by impalement and quartering. 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.