Our work

The FA – growing learning to grow the game

On so many counts, English Football is in a golden phase – both on the pitch and off it. Our national teams are consistently competing deep into tournaments or winning them. Grassroots participation across the board has surged, especially in the women’s, girls’, and disability game. Fuelling and channelling this growth is England Football Learning – the FA’s largest division – empowering the game with the coaching, qualifications, and insights needed at every level – from local junior coaches to elite England manager candidates.

So how do you maintain this momentum? You scale it. You embed it. You make learning the heartbeat of the game. That’s what EFL’s four year strategy aims to do. It doesn’t just support the game – it drives it.

The brand challenge

Our brief was to develop a compelling conceptual and visual platform for the strategy – and bring that vision to life through a dynamic rollout of launch assets. The draft strategy was bold, ambitious – and deeply technical. So the challenge was clear: how do you shape a single, cohesive creative platform that captures its core messages with real clarity and power. And how do you turn complex learning and development frameworks into a compelling narrative – complete with clean, purposeful design, smart illustrations and intuitive visuals?

Our response: Growing learning, growing the game

We followed our 6Ds agency process – immersing ourselves in the world of England Football Learning, involving the right people at the right moments, and applying strategic and creative rigour throughout.

We developed three creative concepts, each with a distinct narrative and visual direction. The chosen route – Learning is growing – struck a powerful chord. It brought together the strategy’s core themes and spoke to the needs of multiple audiences across the FA and beyond.

To bring the idea to life, we redrafted the strategy’s written content, weaving in rich, accessible narrative threads. Visually, we introduced a dynamic graphic language – organic forms, layered textures and modular systems inspired by playbooks, flow diagrams, and tactical formations. The result? A design system that captured the fluidity of multimodal learning and the freedom it brings.

We kept the project moving through tight timelines and multi-stakeholder sign-offs – balancing creativity with precision to deliver a result everyone could rally behind.

The final deliverables included multiple variants of the strategy document for both print and digital, alongside launch event collateral and internal communications to activate the campaign across the organisation.