Tuesday 11 December 2018, 07:30

Drawing the Women's World Cup draw

The FIFA Women's World Cup™ draw was an exciting, colourful and bold event - with the ceremony at La Seine Musicale in Paris featuring some of the biggest stars from the world's most prominent sport.

As the groups take shape and the initial tantalising clashes are marked on the calendars of fans around the globe, women's football has begun to come into sharper focus with France 2019 appearing over the horizon.

With that in mind, those aforementioned adjectives: exciting, colourful and bold - can certainly be used to describe some of the graphic design and illustrations on show around the draw and on social media in the lead-up to and during the event.

The person behind these eye-catching illustrations? Jorge Lawerta, who collaborated with FIFA’s Digital team using the slogan "Dare to Shine" as the driving force behind the designs. Lawerta's illustrations added to the unique look and feel for the draw, and FIFA used them on social media to highlight potential games using the illustrations of the team's captains, reflecting the excitement behind the France 2019 draw, and the upcoming tournament itself.

On top of that, Lawerta and the FIFA Digital team created backdrops with empowering messages about women’s football, with fresh illustrations and lettering. Examples can be seen in the tweet below, captured brilliantly by Getty Images:

"My main objective was to represent the players in the same way that the men's players are represented," Lawerta told FIFA.com. "I wanted to show dynamism, attitude, strength. I did not want people to see women, only footballers. It is time for women's football to have the prominence it deserves and to continue writing its own history."

The Valencia-based graphic designer, who has worked in his home city and also in New York City, is an eager fan like the rest of us - counting down the days until France 2019's big kick-off in June.

"Little by little, women's football is having more attention, and in Spain there are already many clubs that have their own female team," Lawerta noted. "Above all, I like that teams such as USA, Norway, Japan (with modest success in the men's game) are world powers of women's football. This enriches the sport, helps to show there are more 'football countries', adds diversity and more ways of watching football."

With the excitement building to next summer's finals, make sure you keep across FIFA.com, @FIFAWWC and FIFA's official Instagram account for more eye-catching illustrations as we build up to the festival of football in France.