Mamdani’s NYC World Cup campaign is inspired by sports memorabilia, city signage, the subway and the five boroughs

The World Cup kicks off this week and, under footie fan Zohran Mamdani’s administration, it’s arriving in New York City with flair. Whereas global competitions would normally take on a global visual identity, Mayor Mamdani and City Hall had more community-centred ideas, enlisting graphic designer and illustrator Arsh Raziuddin to work with its in-house design team to create a campaign that represents football’s impact and importance to the city.

Arsh was hired as the design consultant, creative director and designer for this NYC-focused campaign identity – and that was a learning curve for the artist, who had never designed a major sports campaign before. As she learned more and more about football culture, she was hands-on every day with the in-house team that helped execute the brand, creating assets from bus stop posters and cup designs (part of a NYC restaurant dining deal) to even visuals on the side of ferries. “I think it’s interesting that a big design firm wasn’t hired for this, and it was pretty hands-on and really a team effort for sure to make it happen,” Arsh tells It’s Nice That. “We kind of explored everything, and I worked with Aneesh Bhoopathy, who we all know did the incredible creative direction for the campaign for the mayor.”

Arsh and the in-house team looked at historic World Cup graphics, 20th century World’s Fair posters from the city and vintage soccer ephemera. Arsh designed a ton of initial designs but “none of them felt like they were for New York” – so she looked more into how to subvert simple touristy imagery and represent the five boroughs of NYC: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. Arsh found out in her research that every borough actually has its own flag (which Arsh turned into individual stickers) and used those local aesthetics to make New Yorkers feel seen, all while developing a classic football-patterned giant apple to represent the largeness and presence of football in the city, but also to make it recognisable to children and adults alike. They called it the “Bapple”. “I wanted it to feel like old sports memorabilia, city signage and the mayor’s collection all at once,” says Arsh.

More on using New York imagery as a visual palette, the designs are rooted in the Transportation Office’s colours, in particular the subway green, taxi yellow, coffee cup blue, ferry orange, and thank you red. “Yes, it’s soccer, yes, it’s the World Cup, but we are talking about New York City,” explains Arsh. The decision to include so much of NYC’s infrastructure in the design came from strong creative direction from Mayor Mamdani, who could look at designs and immediately spitball ideas and offer advice – after all, he does know the city arguably better than anyone. “What we created feels like the mayor's version of the World Cup and there’s this vintage feeling to it, but it still feels fresh,” she adds.

Mayor Mamdani’s office has recently launched an open call inviting design studios and agencies to pitch designs for NYC’s municipal grocery stores, driving civic engagement from designers, to help paint the city they live in. New York City might not be America’s capital, but it is the cultural capital, which makes design all the more important. Mayor Mamdani is adamant on making sure graphic design plays a big role in the city’s personality, entrusting Arsh with taking on a project as massive as the single biggest football event in the world. NYC’s intimate involvement with football makes the football fans in the city feel important and heard. “Design has played a role in New York where these symbols last. I would be honoured to be a part of a legacy that lasts or is remembered throughout the city,” says Arsh, who is, regardless of the temporary identity, a part of New York and its five boroughs forever. “They could have done anything they wanted with even this campaign, and they really trusted me and trusted that the vision that I had come up with would be able to kind of seep through the city... We’re going to start to see the Bapple everywhere.”