What ever happened to "Squashette"?

I have come to the realization that, though I rarely lob, I will never be able to fit a full size squash court in my basement but I'm pretty sure I have room for "Squashette"!

I found this photo on Corbis Images' website and it is entitled "Men Play Miniature Squash". It's a demonstration of "Squashette" given by George Lyttleton Rogers (r) and Mr W. J. Collier. The photo was taken in 1937 in Dulwich, London, UK and is decribed as "backing squash available to the masses". I love that they're playing in pants. Gonna have to try that this week in league.

Google let me down when I tried to find out anything about the two players shown and there's a dearth of info on the net about this sub-species of the game even on Wikipedia!

This photo, on the other hand, could very well have been taken at the Dulwich Squash Club which has been a members-owned club since 1867.

Drop me a line if you know more about "Squashette".


Another awesome photo I found on Corbis is this one of British squash champion Charles Arnold playing squash on rollerskates! Crazy. In 1926 Mr. Arnold wrote one of the first books on squash called "The Game of Squash Racquets" and you can buy a signed copy of it here (#52 on the list) for £250!



















The last shot I wanted to share was this 1958 classic of Mohibullah Khan, the brother of Jansher. (Read more about the Khan dynasty at SquashSite or at Pakistan Paedia.)

Don't try this at home:

One of these things is just like the other.

There's a fellow named Jose who is creating a wonderful library of squash ephemera on Facebook. He's creating photo albums in a myriad of categories including poster designs, logo designs, famous players and their racquets, squash illustrations as well as photos culled from other squash sites. While he could do a better job of crediting his sources, 16oo fans like what he's doing. His group is called "SQUASH , IN THE WORD" - find him on Facebook.

One thing he's done is to help to make the global squash community a little smaller and a LOT more aware of who's doing what from a promotional and graphic design point of view.

Take this trio of images: Three great minds with the same idea? I highly doubt it. I was unable to track down the origin of the first (Eastern Europe? Anyone help with the translation?) but the second is clearly from Athens while the third is from Argentina.

CNN on how to play squash

This from an article found on CNN.com/world sport:

"In squash, players take turns hitting a ball
to the front wall of a court, until one misses."

Sounds easy.

(Source)

Fancy some Fudge with your Squash?

Have you seen the new logo and identity package that England Squash and Racketball Association has just rolled out? Hold on to your racquets all you squash association executive directors cuz this is something new and progressive: No yellow dots or racquets in this brand.

This is fresh and it smells like Fudge. The creative team of Fudge Studios (Bolton, UK) are behind the brand and website. The England Squash and Racketball association selected the agency as a part of a marketing drive to promote these otherwise conventional sports as 'vibrant, modern, and professional'.

David Eccles, managing director of Fudge, (quoted in The Drum) said: "It has been a fabulous project. Squash is experiencing a major resurgence, as England's national teams are now considered World and European Champions, while the growth of racketball has seen thousands of people step on court for the first time.

The new brand is also known as "English Rose":












And the website? No problems navigating to your current ranking here. It's slick and beautiful and it even has rotating background images and various player profiles. Right now they have one of Squash Republic's favs - Darryl Selby.



























Nicely done Fudgies. Gives us squash playing graphic designers out in the trenches some hope.

Now, come on Squash BC and Squash Canada! The bar has been raised so let's get busy on your new website. You know how to reach us:)

Postscript - October 5th:
We've received an anonymous quote from a reader who feels that the ESRA site is suffering from a "case of style over substance" (But it looks SO good!). They point out that while the site looks wonderful and promises boatloads of content, the truth is the ESRA site is not really there yet. Just a small example: Adrian Grant wasn't born on January 1, 1981, but October 6, 1980. So, one wonders, is it Fudge Creative's fault the correct content isn't there or is it the ESRA's?

I would be interested in hearing from anyone in the UK using the site: Have you experienced any issues? Is it working for you?

Thanks for the comments.

Canary Islands Squash

It's official, we're global!

Just found this online: It's a poster for an event that's taking place in Tenerife, the largest island of the seven Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Africa. They've used the template Pacey + Pacey Design created for the PSA and their promoters and partners. Sweet.
























It's kind of weird that I don't see a PSA logo on the poster but they've also removed the photo credit (not so nice) so here's a link to photographer Steve Line's website: SquashPics.

Here's a link to Squash Canarias' website if you're interested.

Also, in case you didn't know, the intense player on the poster is none other than Borja Golan. Check out his groovy site.

Here's the original of the poster again:

Teed off with the Olympics.

I've taken a while getting to this topic because I haven't been able to decide how I feel about squash and the Olympics.

It’s a fact that I love squash. I want everyone I know to step on court and try it, meet the people and fall in love with the game. The WSF has been telling squashies that having our game in the Olympics may just help achieve growth in the numbers of people playing and, at the very least, bring global awareness to the game. That would be nice.

The problem is, I live in Vancouver, the city to next host the Olympics, and I’m learning first-hand what the Olympics is mostly about. While the IOC talks of "universal moral principles" not a day goes by that we don't hear about concessions being made to the IOC or restrictions being placed on the citizenry of Vancouver to ensure that the Olympics makes for good global TV viewing.

The Vancouver Sun’s Daphne Bramham reports, in her article entitled "Rights go out the window to create a seamless 2010 circus" that “Vancouver’s council recently passed an omnibus bylaw amending dozens of existing laws. Among the changes are the creation of so-called free-speech zones and blocks of the city… where no political pamphlets, leaflets, graffiti or 'non-celebratory posters' will be allowed. The mayor still insists that the whole city is a free speech zone, but at the very least, citizens are confused by the disconnect."

Wow. That just doesn't sound like something I want to be involved in. What happened to bringing "people together in peace to respect universal moral principles"? (That's a direct quote.)

I don't pretend to know why squash won't be involved until after 2016. I wasn’t there and just contemplating the backroom dealings make me feel cynical which isn't good for the soul. But you can't avoid the obvious: Alan Thatcher, writing on SquashStars.com, hits the nick when he says that "the IOC places higher value on commercial success than sporting integrity."

PAR anyone?

(Just a last note: If you like the image used in this blog and want to use it for something you're doing drop me a line - info@squashrepublic.com. It's an original so don't just swipe it and remove the copyright line, k? Thanks:)

Flattery will get you nowhere.

My father Michael, who happens to be an internationally renowned graphic designer (with oodles of design awards stashed in the closet of his office), once told me that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I wasn't sure what he meant until I saw someone I had never met waltz into a squash tourney that I was playing in wearing a t-shirt with not one but two of my logo designs on it and it wasn't one of my shirts! (More on that here.) I laughed about it then and, I have to admit, I even felt a little bit flattered when I thought about how someone half away across the world had liked my design enough to steal it, print up t-shirts and present the design as their own. I thought I was witnessing a "one-off" but then it happened again.

One night a couple of years ago I was at my squash club having a post-game pint when talk turned to graphics and someone accused me of design theft. They had seen a website that had the same logo that I was using for my squash clothing line "S.C.R.U. Squash". They were sure that I had stolen it. When I got home I hopped on the world wide web and finally found the website using it: It was a Malaysian squash academy and they were using a variation of the logo I had created and had been using since 2002. I emailed the academy over and over again and when I didn't hear back I went straight to the top and asked the Asian Squash Federation and the Squash Rackets Association of Malaysia to help me stop them. I showed them my evidence (below) and they stepped in and got the academy to stop using my logo. (My thanks again!) Still waiting for an apology from Mr. Foo. . .








Then it happened a third time: I was surfing the net for squash related info and I saw that a provincial squash association in Mexico was using my logo to represent their group. This time the colours were changed and a line of text added. Jeez. I ended up talking via email to the head of Colima Squash who was very apologetic and told me how they had hired someone to design them a logo and when he presented it to them they loved it! They weren't very happy to find out that their new logo was actually mine and they very quickly switched to a new logo (and a new designer I hope!)













Which brings us to today's example of "flattery".

One year ago I designed a logo and poster for a tournament at one of our local clubs. The theme was "Cuba Libre" and I suggested "Viva Squash" and "Revolutionize your Squash" as two mottos that could be used in the marketing of the event. The former was used in online advertising while the latter was used in the print poster.

Here's the "Viva Squash" logo with my logo in the star.

The event was fabulous and successful and I was very proud of the work I did so imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a poster that was using the photo I had taken of two junior squash friends of mine, Alykan and Ahmad, as the main graphic on their poster. They have also taken the tagline "Revolutionize Your Squash" and used it as if they came up with it. Couldn't even translate it into Spanish?

Judge for yoursef: On the left is the poster I designed. On the right is the poster for Sky Gym's squash tournament. Spot the similarities? (Click on them to see a larger view. Or do you need to?)

The poster in question is for an event taking place in less than two weeks at Sky Gym Training Centre in Naucalpan de Juárez, Mexico, so the damage is done. I'll track them down and let them know that I'm pissed but real drag is that the players entering this tournament have no idea who created the artwork for the event. I bet they have no idea it was a squash-crazy designer in Canada.

I wonder if my artwork will appear on the souvenir t-shirts too? (I'm an XL, Ahmad's a large and Alykhan's a medium . . . just in case.)

My father was right about the flattery part of this but he also had another adage that he taught me from an early age: Give credit where credit is due.

Let me be clear here about credit because I'm not just talking about financial credit. If they had asked me I probably would have let them use the artwork in exchange for a credit line, telling the world who designed it, or for putting my logo on the poster. Easy peezy.

What we're talking about here is plagiarism and the dictionary defines it as copying something without crediting the source.

Plagiarism is stealing and that's not flattering.