adidas is one of the major partners of the Confederation’s Cup, hosted for the first time on African soil, and they were looking to create a campaign to celebrate this historic event. They wanted to honour the uniqueness of Africa and African football; welcome the global stars and find an African interpretation of their ‘together I am strong’ philosophy.

We wanted to honour the players by portraying them in the style of the heroes of Africa by using a street-art form that is truly our continent's own design language.The artwork of this ubiquitous signage is consistently naïve and almost two-dimensional. It is usually accompanied by hand-painted type or scrawl that describes and names the cut/style. We combed the streets of South Africa's cities in search of the best signs and found the artists behind them. We commissioned them to interpret adidas' players as portraits, and to add their distinctive array of typographic skills to the work.

This is a campaign that has attained phenomenal success at home and abroad.

The exotic appeal of the images has seen them travel the world. Locally, Africans are deeply touched by the idea of a Western company paying homage to the art of our cities. The campaign has been applied through the line from print and poster to P.O.S, buses and billboards. Excitement for the Confed-Cup is at an all time high, but perhaps the most fitting tribute from the world's most fanatical football fans is that you can now have a three-striped haircut- called The adidas.