// S01 — Editorial / Product

Premier Friends Club

Eight clubs. One table. No hiding.

ProjectSelf-initiated

RoleBrand, design, build

Year2026

ScopeIdentity, editorial design, live standings site

Season2026–27 — runs to 30 May 2027

Scroll / Case study

// The brief

Nine friends, each committed to a different club, and a group chat that never stops arguing about who is actually having the better season. The site settles it: every league result each friend's club posts is banked as their points, in one table that runs to the final day.

// The challenge

A running argument among nine friends with no way to settle it. Everyone remembers their own good weekends and forgets the bad ones, and a group chat has no memory. The problem is not really software — it is that bragging rights need a scoreboard nobody can dispute.

A personal project, built for nine friends. Fratres Stulta Fides — foolish faith, kept together.

// The work

Premier Friends Club — the collage hero: eight clubs, one table, no hiding — The hero is a collage of all eight clubs at once — colours, crests and terraces torn together — with the week's fixtures running underneath.

Premier Friends Club — this week's match-day posters, one per fixture, the friend named before the club — Match-day posters, one per fixture, in the same torn-collage system as the hero. Each names the friend before the club, so a derby is between two people.

Premier Friends Club — the call-outs: the season ahead, foolish faith kept together, and the nine — The call-outs are where the joke lives — the next friend derby (“the loser goes quiet for a week”), the run-in, foolish faith kept together, and the nine badged like a squad.

Premier Friends Club — the table, right now: games played, points banked, wins, derbies to come — Ranked on points exactly as the league ranks its own, with games played alongside — because one member plays eight more matches than everyone else. Results, table and fixtures all refresh on their own.

Premier Friends Club — the full standings, ranked on points with goal difference — Ranked on points exactly as the league ranks its own, with games played alongside — because one member plays eight more matches than everyone else. Results, table and fixtures all refresh on their own.

Premier Friends Club — the roster: nine members, eight clubs, thirty-nine games played — The Roster — nine friends, eight clubs, one table. Win three, draw one, lose nothing but face.

// The mandate

Give the argument a table. Make it look like something worth taking seriously, and make it keep itself current for a whole season without anyone maintaining it.

// John's role

↳Created the identity — crest, wordmark, motto and editorial voice
↳Art-directed the collage hero from club colours, crests and terrace imagery
↳Designed the table, fixture ticker, member roster and gallery
↳Built the site and wired it to a fixture feed so results and standings update themselves
↳Wrote the copy, including the per-fixture derby lines

The people behind the work

↳Self-initiated — brand, design and build by John Carman

// Key decisions

Treat it like a real competition

Serif headlines, a proper crest, a Latin motto, an editorial voice that reports the standings straight. Playing it deadpan is what makes the joke work — a site that winked at itself would have been funny once and boring by October.

Follow the league's own format

Points, ranked exactly as the Premier League table ranks them. Nobody has to learn a scoring system, and no one can argue with the maths.

Name the friend, not just the club

Fixtures read 'Thomas Evan Hicks · Liverpool vs Eric Moreno · Fulham'. When two friends' clubs meet it becomes a derby with a name attached, which is the part everyone actually cares about.

Handle the asymmetry honestly

One friend's club plays 46 games to everyone else's 38. Rather than hide it or fudge the maths, the site says so on the front page and shows points per game alongside the total.

// The outcome

↳Live for the 2026–27 season, updating itself through to 30 May 2027
↳Nine members, eight clubs, and 41 friend derbies still to come at the time of writing
↳The argument now has a table, which has settled nothing and improved everything

// Reflection

Small, self-imposed briefs are where I try the things client work is too cautious for — in this case a heavy collage treatment and a completely deadpan editorial voice on an absurd premise. It also had to run unattended for ten months, which is a stricter constraint than most client sites face and a good discipline.

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