United We Stand - Blades Propaganda

A slightly unusual post today. From the start of the season I have developed an interest in football art and posters. It started off with The Ball Is Round highlighting the excellent work of Proworx and the posters they created for each home game at Lewes FC. You can see examples here. Then in recent weeks I came across the excellent US based football culture site Pitch Invasion and they highlighted the work of Portland Timbers supporter Brent Diskin creating propaganda posters for his team. I loved the ideas and started looking at how I could develop similar for Sheffield United with my fledgling Photoshop skills. After putting up my first efforts on twitter, they got a positive response and other Blades fans got involved.

Given the week the Blades have had and the importance of tomorrow's match against Stevenage, we thought now would be a good time to galvanise the support and share our efforts.

I would love to think that if the response is positive we could encourage the club to include them (with the creators agreement), along with any others that might subsequently be created, in the matchday programmes next year. A nice alternative to player pull outs. Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Based on a US WWII poster, the message is appropriate and I like the use of morse code (Ian Rands)

Shamelessly utilising a Brent Diskin design which takes a Russian space race poster      (Ian Rands)

A missile poster provided the perfect slogan, but needed a little change of style & colour      (Ian Rands)

What the World Was Waiting For - Based On The Stone Roses current tour posters         (Ian Rands)

Lee Doane decided to take on a slogan increasingly used by United fans. With our cross city rivals always using one 'M' word, Blades fans like to respond with another. The fist image seemed appropriate with the subtle addition of the rose and blades of United's badge.

  (Lee Doane)

Blades supporter Andrew Clarkson is a photographer http://www.andrewclarkson.co.uk  and put his artistic skills to the challenge;

"I've always enjoyed looking at historical propaganda posters and thought its a shame that the use of them seems to have died out. My United designs are heavily influenced by some very famous posters but I think that adds to them."

"After the week or so where we as a club seem to have been backed into a corner we need to fully focus and get behind the lads. These images I hope can act as a rallying call to all Blades. UTB!"

(Andrew Clarkson)

(Andrew Clarkson)

(Andrew Clarkson)

(Andrew Clarkson)

(Andrew Clarkson)

Finally, Graphic Designer Richard Hanley's creation, based on the Make Art, Not War poster,  focuses on the style of play that United fans want, with a legend and great advocate of the message at the centre of it.

(Richard Hanley)

Thank you to all three fellow Blades for their efforts, if anyone else wants to contribute then email your Blades Propaganda to the email address at the top of the page.