FFF France & Héritage

Making France Heard

If the logo is how an organization dresses, typography is the tone of its voice.

The new identity of the French national teams is not built around a shared emblem alone. It also has its own typefaces.

Designed by Solstices Studio and Blaze Type, the France and Héritage families make the brand recognizable across all its communications. The project shows how an agency and a type foundry can work together to transform a communication challenge into a complete, durable, proprietary typographic tool.

An identity considered as a whole

The project began with a public tender issued by the French Football Federation. Conducted in two rounds, the consultation covered the positioning and identity of all the French national teams.

Its scope extended far beyond the design of a logo. The goal was to build a system capable of working across broadcast, stadium environments, print, merchandising, social media, and internal communications.

The creation of a proprietary typeface appeared in the brief as an option. From the outset, Solstices Studio made it a strong recommendation.

For Solstices, it was never really optional. From the moment we submitted our proposal, we were convinced that an identity of this scale had to include the creation of its own typographic language.
We wanted the French national teams to be recognizable through the way they write, sometimes even before the rooster appears.

The decision also addressed very practical concerns. Given the volume of content produced, the diversity of media, and the number of users involved, a proprietary type family provides greater long-term control over licensing and deployment.

A three-way collaboration

Solstices Studio and Blaze Type had already collaborated on several sports-related projects, including the identity of the Ligue Féminine de Football Professionnel. This shared experience had allowed them to develop a common working language, without turning the French national teams project into the repetition of an existing formula.

The commission brought together three complementary areas of expertise. Solstices defined the strategy, creative territory, and art direction. Blaze Type contributed its expertise in type design, font production, and type engineering.

“It was really this FFF–Solstices–Blaze Type triangle that allowed us to take the details so far.”
— Anaïs Allegrini

Typography was not added as decoration at the end of the process. It was developed from the outset in dialogue with the emblem and the brand architecture.

From the logo to two type families

Blaze Type’s first task involved the “FFF” and “France” lettering integrated into the new emblem. These few letters had to be immediately legible, possess an identity of their own, and establish their place without competing with the rooster.

The project then expanded into a complete system of eight fonts: four sans serifs for text and functional uses, and four more expressive display serifs.

“The identity has to speak institutionally one moment and shout from a stadium screen the next.”
— Matthieu Salvaggio

This duality addresses one of the project’s central challenges: representing contemporary France without erasing its history.

France is the system’s primary voice. Powerful and recognizable, it supports everyday communications, athletic performance, and current events.

Héritage appears in more targeted moments. It evokes memory, transmission, dates, victories, and events that belong to a shared history.

The brand does not have to choose between its history and its modernity. It can carry both.

Interpreting the archives

Solstices Studio provided Blaze Type with a precise creative direction, a set of intentions and uses, and a collection of references drawn from the FFF archives: historic jerseys, lettering, documents, and objects from different eras.

Blaze Type had to translate this material into contemporary typographic principles: proportions, rhythm, terminals, numeral construction, and relationships between characters.

“The trap is to treat heritage as a costume. It should be approached as a source of logic rather than a repertoire of forms.”
— Matthieu Salvaggio

The foundry had genuine freedom to interpret the brief. Solstices had defined the territory and constraints, but it was not looking for a simple executor. The design emerged through dialogue, shaped by Blaze Type’s proposals and their continuous evaluation within the wider identity.

Designing a tool, not just letters

Creating a brand typeface does not mean mechanically expanding a few forms taken from a logo. Every letter must work within a complete alphabet, across multiple weights and hundreds of combinations.

Blaze Type worked on proportions, counters, spacing, kerning, diacritics, and numerals, which are especially important in football. Scores, dates, statistics, standings, and player numbers all contribute to the brand’s language.

This design work was accompanied by a less visible but essential component: producing the font files, ensuring their reliability, and adapting them to different technical environments.

Blaze Type’s expertise lies precisely in its ability to transform a graphic intention into a coherent, usable, and properly engineered system.

Testing in real-world applications

An alphabet can look beautiful in a specimen and behave very differently when it becomes a score, a player’s name, a three-word Instagram headline, or a few seconds of animation in a stadium.

The typefaces were quickly integrated into real applications: player names, scores, posters, social media posts, animations, and stadium screens.

Testing them in context allowed the design to be refined throughout the project. A form that appears convincing on a desktop screen may lose legibility from several dozen yards away, after broadcast compression, or within a fast-moving animation.

Capital letters became the natural choice for many applications because of their impact and immediacy. Héritage, by contrast, was deliberately reserved for selected moments in order to preserve its emotional strength.

An asset designed to last

The rooster appears once; the type is everywhere.

France and Héritage were conceived as proprietary assets of the French national teams. They are not simply two fonts selected to accompany a brand guideline, but a language that fully belongs to the identity.

This ownership reinforces the brand’s distinctiveness and provides greater control over licensing, users, and external partners. It also allows the system to evolve without losing its consistency.

Delivery therefore does not mark the end of the project. Digital practices, media, and the needs of the French national teams will continue to change. The system was designed as a foundation capable of accommodating those developments.

The collaboration between the FFF, Solstices Studio, and Blaze Type demonstrates what custom typography can bring to an identity of this scale: a distinctive voice, a shared working tool, and a durable brand asset.

For Blaze Type, the project also summarizes the role of a foundry in a brand commission: understanding a vision, interpreting it with precision, testing it against real-world uses, and giving it the technical means to endure.