During the winter of 2019, along with a handful of collaborators, we set up a studio in the dilapidated Nike Football Training Center, in the heart of Klipspruit, Soweto for a month-long immersive design exercise.
The Center was built for the 2010 World Cup, and as a result it was only focused on football. It was perceived by Sowetans as more of an elite club; exclusive and inaccessible.
We set out to change that by giving the space back to the community, making it theirs by co-creating it with them every step of the way. At the same time we knew that Nike intended to broaden the playing field with a more inuclusive range of sports, from dancing and yoga to basketball and skateboarding.
Frequent workshops with young local entrepreneurs, students and athletes gave us the insight and inspiration for the name, SHAPA, and everything that followed. From the colour palette that mimics the built environment of Soweto, to the quotes by local Sowetans and the choice of materials. Everything was a nod back to the community and a reminder that through sport they have everything they need to achieve.
The inspiration for the custom typeface, designed for the Shapa Soweto facility, comes from the interplay between pattern and type, inspiration and function, context and meaning.
The hard graphic shadows created by the canopy structure under the Sowetan sun mimics the angles and lines in the typeface, creating a sense of movement, speed and rhythm. Throughout the facility the interplay between positive and negative space was used to create a typeface that seamlessly blends into the design language, yet changes its role from function to inspiration effortlessly. Welcome to Shapa Soweto, the new home for the future stars of Soweto.