Sappi Ideas that Matter - Book 7

Europe
Offside
in-kick.org
48
The youth, the homeless, the unemployed, drug addicts
and alcoholics. Each one a star striker, defender or
goalkeeper in the making, with a sense of purpose and a
bright future. This is the mission of in-kick.org, a project
of Switzerland Sports Integration that takes those
marginalised by society and reintegrates them through
exposure to the beautiful game.
It’s certainly an innovative approach, and one which
attracted the attention of Claudia Klat and Dominique
Berrel, students in graphics and media design at
the F+F School for Art and Media Design in Zürich,
Switzerland.
But the activities of in-kick.org are so much more
serious than simply offering the homeless a distraction
to keep them off the streets. Every year, in-kick.org
organises the Homeless Swiss Championship, and
recruits 16 star players for the Swiss Homeless
National Team, and eight players to compete at the
Homeless World Cup.
So, last year, Claudia and Dominique designed ‘Offside’;
a book publicising the organisation, which took the
form of a diary of the Swiss Homeless national team’s
preparation for the Homeless World Cup.
Training sessions and qualification tournaments were
presented as pages from a journal. The first few pages
of the book display participating teams in the style of
football stickers. For 18 chapters, the book moves to
a thrilling conclusion; the 2006 Homeless World Cup in
Cape Town, South Africa.
Team posters complete the collateral, contributing
further towards building the self-esteem of the players,
and made available for sale in bookstores in Germany,
Austria and Switzerland and sold in the streets of Zürich,
Bern and Basel by the vendors of Surprise, the Swiss
Homeless newspaper.
Described as one of the ‘most beautiful Swiss books
of 2006’, Offside is ‘a dynamic, lively arrangement
of colour photographs and informative texts that ...
convinces with its coherent visual implementation.
A committed book about an unconventional and
remarkable event.’ Surely the Swiss will never look
at the homeless or footballers in the same way again.