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The Uncultured World Cup
By Alixandra Rutnik on Dec 15, 2022
One Club Members Shadab Wajih & Yashashree Samant create an educational art project inspired by The World Cup
The 2022 World Cup is coming to an end and we can’t wait to see which team will persevere and take home the big win! Will it be Argentina or France? But before we find out the winner, we have to talk about The Uncultured World Cup– a fun creative project tailored to learning the greatest insults from each country participating in the 2022 World Cup designed and written by Former Young Ones Winners Shadab Wajih (2019) and Yashashree Samant (2020).
In 2020, we spoke with Shadab about his Kama Sutra 2.0 student project and Yashashree about her Mentor & Creative student expereince. Now Shadab is a Senior Art Director at Golin and Yashashree is a Copywriter at MRM. We love to see our young One Club Members grow in their advertising careers!
We interviewed Shadab and Yashashree about The Uncultured World Cup, just in the nick of time.
Where did you come up with the idea to create The (Un)cultured World Cup?
The Football World Cup is easily the biggest sporting event, and because it happens only every four years, people are always glued. One of the most integral parts of any World Cup is rivalry and healthy competition. So we thought, as long as fans are going at it with each other, why not articulate better insults than the usual F-Bombs and racial slurs? The Uncultured World Cup was made so football fans can insult their opponents in a way that really hurts, while inadvertently learning something about their rival’s culture.
How did you end up curating insults on postage stamps?
We think our insults are a window into another country’s culture. So we got inspired by an older visual way of peeking into a culture: vintage postcards. We followed an art deco vintage aesthetic, and no postcard is complete without a stamp. As for the order of making, we followed the match calendar to prioritize the countries.
"We think our insults are a window into another country’s culture. So we got inspired by an older visual way of peeking into a culture: vintage postcards."
It’s pretty difficult to directly translate some phrases into English, so how did you work through this obstacle when discovering the insults?
We scoured the internet and went to find insults that would be truly unique and resonate with that particular culture. At times we cross-referenced it with friends and colleagues to ensure that it was relevant. Finding insults for some countries did get more difficult, and that’s where Reddit jumped in, allowing us to crowdsource the accurate insults.
What roles did you both partake in?
We both did the research and ideation part together. Being the copywriter, Yashashree wrote almost all the captions and copy, while Shadab did all the design and illustration work.
What teams have you been rooting for during the World Cup?
Shadab has been a huge football fan since the 2006 World Cup, having supported Germany in every tournament since. Unfortunately, they were defeated pretty early on this year, but he does play the sport regularly and also watches, on average, one game a week. And Yashashree is not so much an ardent fan, but who can miss the World Cup?
What would you like to say to all the football fans out there?
Football fans are an amazing community– their loyalty runs deep, just like their words. All we want to say to them is, let’s take the World Cup as an opportunity to know more about each other’s cultures. Maybe even go beyond the insults.
What are you both working on now?
Well, this World Cup project has been pretty exhausting, considering we have 32 teams to cater to (Next time, it’ll be 48!). We will take a break from our side projects until the holidays are done, and then we have a few more interesting art projects lined up. Stay tuned, and thanks for letting us add to your insult repertoire.
One Club for Creativity Members get featured here on the One Club website and across our social media channels. Have a new project you'd love to share? An upcoming exhibition and you'd like us to help spread the word? We always love to know what our One Club Members have been up to, so don’t forget to send us your cool work!
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