Before and after comparison of Barnet FC's Instagram grid, showing the matchday content system applied across the feed

Barnet FC · Self-Directed Practice

Building a system for matchday.

☕ about a 2-minute read

Overview

A self-directed content system built for Barnet FC's matchday social output — Starting XI graphics, lineup cards, fulltime results and a hero matchday post, all sharing one typographic and layout language. Rather than a single poster, the brief was the whole matchday cycle: what goes out before kickoff, what goes out at fulltime, and how it all reads as one identity scrolling through a feed.

The system was shared directly with Barnet FC's marketing team.

templates in the system: matchday hero, Starting XI, lineup, fulltime

kit colourways built into every template: home and away

visual system carrying every post

One system, every fixture.

Most matchday graphics get made fixture by fixture, template by template, with no throughline between them. This system worked the other way — a single typographic and layout language, a bold serif headline, a consistent crest and sponsor lockup, an orange-and-black palette pulled straight from the kit, built to carry every graphic in the cycle: the pre-match hero, the Starting XI reveal, the substitutes lineup, the fulltime result.

Built to hold up in both a stadium-photography context and a plain studio one, so the system worked whether the source image was a matchday crowd shot or a training-ground portrait.

Barnet FC matchday hero template with crest, kit photography and fixture details

From kickoff to fulltime.

Each fixture generates its own small content arc — Starting XI before kickoff, lineup as a reference card, fulltime with the score and goalscorers once the whistle blows. Built for both kit colourways, home orange-and-black and the away purple-and-white, so the system read consistently no matter which strip was on the pitch that day.

Barnet FC matchday content template — Starting XI, lineup or fulltime result graphic

Before and after.

Alongside the templates, a full Instagram grid mockup was built to show the system in context — what the club's feed read like before versus what it looks like carrying this identity end to end. The two grids sit side by side so the difference isn't abstract: the same posts, the same moments, one telling a scattered story and one telling a consistent one.