Below are some of my personal Liverpool Football Club (LFC) player designs that I have created for my Instagram graphic design page. Here I have shown a range of styles, showing my improvements and experiments with textures, colour palettes, gradients, layouts, styles, typography and more!
Some of these player designs are players that are currently at the club, some player designs are former players that have previously played for the club. There is also some speculative player designs of players that are linked with LFC, exploring kit swaps in relation to transfer news and rumours, which I am currently trying to do and learn more about kit swaps so my designs can keep improving and stay relevant.
Below each design I have explained how I created the piece with a short description.
This design is based off one of Liverpool's young and upcoming players, Stefan Bajectic who broke into the first team in the 2022/2023 season. I used an image of the player mid-air and created a blurry effect behind him creating the feeling of how he quick he was in the air. I added a texture on the background and worked on the players lighting by adding hints of red, associating with the background and the kit.
The player, Sadio Mane, announced that he was leaving LFC after 7 years at the club where he became a world class player, fan favourite and helped bring success to Liverpool. I created a 'thank you' graphic to show how thankful us LFC fans were of the player. I used the famous Liver Bird that represents the club and the city of Liverpool as a background with several photos of Sadio Mane in showing him over the years and paired it with grunge textures and red gradients on top.
This design was based off the signing of Arthur who came to the club on loan for the 2022/2023 season meaning I created a design to showcase this. I focused a lot more on player treatment within this design which can be seen by the detailed looks within each image and played around with the movement within typography.
This was my first kit swap design as Liverpool were linked with these 3 players, Nunes, Bellingham and Caicedo. Due to the speculation all over social media I wanted to create a design and had a lot of fun with this piece as I had to crop kits off different LFC players and merge them onto the bodies of the players above. I was really happy with the outcome as it does look like the players are in LFC kit and I received a lot of positive feedback from people on Instagram!
With this design I was experimenting with the colours and patterns of the kit and implanted this into the graphic. I also used 3 different images and had to work on the positioning of each one allowing the viewer to follow the design from left to right. I used the pattern from the collar and sleeves and overlayed it over a blurred image of LFC fans which allowed the player, Luis Diaz to be the main focus.
This is one of my first experiments with blur effect within photoshop and was really happy with the outcome as I positioned the liver bird at an angle and blurred the image apart from the centre which can be seen more detailed. I also experimented with opacity within a player and had several copies of the image on the left which created a faded effect.
This was another farewell piece to a player, Divock Origi, who became a hero figure at the club due to his important goals leading to trophies so it was nice to create a design to thank him for his service. It was my first time using several images within a design meaning I had to get the positioning and layout to sit nicely. Due to the several images I had to do a lot of player treatment to make sure the player looked detailed and had the right lighting towards it. This was also my first time experimenting with different brushes which can be seen on the background.
Another 'thank you' graphic, however I wanted to make a simpler design which is why I used 2 images, one large one of the upper body and one small one of the players whole body. I was really happy with the composition of this design as it the images sat well on the background of the wings of the liver bird. I added grunge textures to the typeface as well as on top of the final design to have a strong feeling towards it.
This was one of my first signing graphics, meaning I had only a few images due to the club only releasing set images so I used one and made it the main image and positioned it towards the centre. I also got the image of the back of the players, Nunez, kit and created shapes on the gold outline and added a gold glow to it so it stood out from behind the player. I also added the outline of the liver bird’s wings along with a grunge texture to make the background have that rough effect.
This was another signing graphic in which I used the glowing effect on the back of the kit to make the players name, Ramsay, stand out and catch the audiences eye. For the background I used an image of fans and added a red gradient layer on top along with a blur effect to allow the players images stand out. For the typeface I created a copy with the fill opacity to 0 and added a stroke to the layer meaning you could see the rest of the word that was hidden by the player’s head.
This graphic was to celebrate the player, Mo Salah, getting the record for the fastest hattrick in the champions league. To convey this, I placed the title of the record, his name and the number of each goal within the graphic and added a white glow to allow the words and letters to stand out. I also used the photoshop textures for the first time which created the background and I placed the champions league logo ball on top and changed the layer to overlay so it sat on top nicely. This allowed me to then place the images around the typography and I added white glows towards behind each player image to emphasise that all the spotlight was on him.
This signing graphic was an experimental piece where I focused on using the main image within a rectangle and having him, Gakpo, signing the contract at the bottom. For the background I used a solid red colour, similar to the kit and added a noise effect to it which creates a gritty like texture. I then added little props such as the LFC mug and the Dutch flag, which represents his nation. I added a strong shadow to the rectangle to make the large image stand out more. I then used a large typeface called impact and had his name in a fancier typeface called mistrully which sat underneath the first typeface.
This was an experimental piece on cutting out images that are little more difficult such as the players, Trent, hair. I also experimented with different textures on the background, the one I ended using was a metal sheet with holes which I thought looked nice with a white liver bird on top.
This was one of my first typography experimental pieces as I messed around with the shape and distort effects on the words. I turned the typeface, impact, which is strong and bold to have rigid outlines which I added explosive brushes effect on top for detail as well as clipping masking the liver bird to filled words. I created a ripped paper effect on the background with the fans appearing within the rip and had the images of the player sitting on top of the background but behind the typography.
This design was to showcase a former Liverpool legend who played in a Liverpool legend charity game, which the smaller image shows. I experimented with engraving the typeface into the background by adding chiselled textures which creates the effect that the word is carved into the background. I also experimented with the camera raw settings to make the player images more detailed and sharper as well as adding a black and white mask to the images but only masking the skin allowing the kit to match the background. I also added a hue and saturation layer to the main image and masked over the eye so it appears red, again to match the background.
