19 artists created gig-style posters for every home match of Ipswich Town’s last season

If you’re an Ipswich Town fan you’ll probably be more than familiar with the fan song Call Me Ted – an anthem that’s belted across the stands on match day weekends. This title fittingly became the name of a project that set out to create gig-style promo posters for the team’s matches following their 2024 promotion to the Premier League, initiated by brothers and lifelong town fans Steven and Richard Haugh.

Born and raised in Ipswich the pair previously put on local club nights called Up Rock where they would DJ and bring bands together across the town, but, most importantly, they also created show stopping posters to advertise the events. Bonded over their mutual love for football and creativity, Steve and Richard’s home teams’ return to the Premier League sparked an idea for a new poster making pursuit; the duo set themselves the challenge of collaborating with 19 artists to create one-off posters for each of Ipswich’s home games.

Keen to both communicate the excitement of each match in a new way and to add some soul to the premier league, the duo’s posters aimed to challenge the imagery that is so often associated with football. Their debut poster, designed by Steve for the teams initial Liverpool match celebrated the relationship between father and daughter fans capturing “the shared excitement of generations that have seen us in the Premier League before and those that haven’t”, Steve shares. This first artwork was a personal memento for all of the incredible moments spent watching the teams last two seasons alongside all his daughters and nieces, he tells us.

Following this first poster, the pair built up an Instagram following, featuring more artist posters and creating a buzz around Ipswich by putting up pieces “in shop windows and bars across the town, spreading some colour and highlighting the amazing talent of each artist’s on our doorstep”, shares Steve. One poster was discovered by a representative of Ipswich Town FC in a local pub toilet and the team loved it so much that they reached out to Steve and Richard asking permission to use their artwork on the cover of their official Premier League match-day programmes.

“The project snowballed really quickly”, Steve says, “we recruited our friends Kevin Bennett and Andy Mortimer to become a four-man team”, and from that point onward the team set out to gather an incredible lineup of artistic talent for everything that came next. Each poster took the idea of following a football club in so many different directions: “we had the static horse from the Ipswich badge come to life in fantastical style courtesy of Colombian born and now Ipswich resident Catalina Carvajal; Brie Harrison presented a still life with subtle hints to the teams involved; while Kelly Anna imagined a bold powerful character bursting through the fragmented badges of Ipswich and Arsenal”, Richard says. The project found its finish to the season with a collaboration with Ed Sheeran for poster 19.

To celebrate the community that the project has built, the Call Me Ted team recently hosted a pop-up exhibition in Ipswich town centre displaying all 19 of their artist collaborations to date at scale, “we also held artist-led workshops with more than 300 local school children, helping inspire the next generation of design talent”, shares Steve. As well as giving fans the chance to see works in person, the pair have started an online shop where you can get your hands on A3 posters and postcard sets of each match poster.

Whilst the premier league may not have ended in Ipswich’s favour, this intersection of art and football is something that the creative team want to keep exploring: “we’re now planning for season two of Call Me Ted, so watch this space!” ends Richard.