You’ll Never Walk Alone

Creating a digital membership for the Liverpool Football Club
LFC Heroes Club on Sotheby’s Metaverse

The Concept

How do we create a moment for LFC fans and how do we also create a visually compelling campaign for both lovers of football, and those new to the LFC team.

We tapped into a rich history from one of England’s historic football clubs to create a compelling digital club. Pooling from years and research of lore from the infamous ‘Boot Room’, the Serotonin, Sotheby’s and Liverpool Football Club team ideated on the concept of digitizing and opening up the ‘boot room’ to the fans while maintaining an utmost important and respect to the brand equity.

Below are some of the research images of the ‘boot room’ that kicked off conceptualizing not only the overall concept, but also the animated video created in tandem with State.tv.

Once we had the concept started, we approached the idea of how a digital blockchain token for LFC would be visually portrayed. In my creative direction research - I presented multiple directions on creative illustrators we could work alongside to bring to life the LFC players. One creative is Dale Murray, who I have always wanted to work with on a project since 2011. It seemed the opportunity aligned well given Dale is not only a football fan, but also an English creative.

What follows are some of the early sketches and the development of the LFC Heroes Club.

Dale Murray + LFC

A look at the development of the open edition LFC Heroes Club tokens created alongside UK-based illustrator, Dale Murray. From inspiration of creative pieces Dale previously created that provided inspiration, to the final look of the creative assets.

Working with Dale to create both the 1 of 1 and open editions of the LFC Heroes Club, started primarily with reference photographs of the LFC squad as well as an experimental stage where we introduced traits that would be carried across all of the squad mates. Meaning some of the unique superhero, fresh threads, and match day visuals could be generated together be an algorithm. It was no easy task trying to figure out how to have a sweeping visual guideline with so many unique and interesting LFC players.

The Inspiration

Dale Murray’s previous work that spurred the visual direction for the LFC Heroes Club.

Once an internal pitch and review process commenced and was approved both by the Sotheby’s and LFC team, I began to work closely with Dale to reference an LFC player for the initial direction of the creative assets. What we wanted to accomplish is a foundation to the style that all stakeholders would be keen on and approve. The following are some of those early directions.

The above direction - as much as I enjoyed it - was seemingly a bit too angular and not as welcoming to the Sotheby’s and LFC teams. A revision was to follow.

Version two (shown above) of the direction for the LFC Heroes club was more of a hit with the teams. What would follow after refining this direction a bit more is the introduction of traits and overall conceptual pillars for them. We decided on Match Day, Fresh Threads (what the players would wear off the pitch), and the most important of all - SUPERHERO!

One other direction for the LFC Heroes Club that was a bit more rare was the creation of 1 of 1 digital creative assets (tokens) that would be auctioned on the Sotheby’s Metaverse website. The goal of this auction was to raise money for the LFC Foundation, the official charity of the Liverpool Football Club which gives back to the youth and community.

As noted above, a lot changed from the second revision to what is presented. The steps involved were multiple meetings and rigorous revisions to achieve traits and an overall visual approach that was compelling and could work alongside the algorithm, meaning some of these traits would cross over and be swapped for others randomly, though without repeating the same final creative asset so there were never duplicates.

LFC Heroes 1:1

The following showcases the direction of the unique 1:1 digital assets that were created for the LFC Foundation auction on Sotheby’s Metaverse.

The 1:1 auction on Sotheby’s was such a success that we raised £281,375 for the LFC Foundation.

Key Art & Branding

Also part of the overall process for the LFC Heroes Club was branding it with a distinct look that pulled from the brand guidelines.

We started off with an approach that utilized the liver bird and the club’s history through symbols and a range of typographic directions. Though this approach was one I was fond of, we decided to also explore a direction that leaned on superhero comic book typography. The classic ‘wham’ and ‘bam’ as seen on and within comics.

A 3-dimensional type and starburst treatment was the overall outcome for the LFC Heroes Club logo. It would then carry into an all-encompassing visual campaign to brand the LFC experience; from matches to giveaways, as well as unique moments on the LFC Heroes Club Discord server. Some examples of those moments follow.

We also created alongside Dale Murray special unique tokens for LFC Heroes Club digital asset holders.

Thank you for viewing the LFC Heroes Club project!

More conceptual notes and process, as well as Figma working files are available upon request.
Many thanks to the Serotonin, Sotheby’s, State.tv and LFC teams as well as the always incredible, Dale Murray.