Daniel Nyari's Play Maker Illustrations - Football News

Scouring the globe for all things cool and football leads us to many great discoveries and none more so than New York based illustrator and designer Daniel Nyari's collection of portraits entitled 'Playmakers'. Using his signature style the collection is a series of caricatures featuring some of footballs greatest from legends Cruyff and Maradonna to modern heroes such as Zidane and Messi.
 

Born in Romania, Nyari grew up in Austria before moving to New York City where he continued his education in Film, Design, Fine & Graphic Arts. Currently living and working in New York City as an illustrator he has a quirky style that is perfectly shown off in this cool collection of football play making legends.

To Kick off the collection Nyari, who wants to educate the younger generation on some of footballs older legends, starts of with a definition of a play maker; A player in football who leads attacks or brings other players on the same side into a position from which they could score. He often plays centrally between the opposition’s defence & attack. He has also been known as a trequartista, regista, enganche, meia-armadror, meia-de-ligação, fantasisti, rifinitore, or false nine depending on cultural origin and/or position.

But it wasn't necessarily the skill and flair of play makers in particular that inspired his project but more the idea of collating a compilation. Speaking with 'A Sporting Life magazine' about the project he explains the thinking behind the idea. "I always wanted to see a collection of these on one platform. Moreover the idea of nostalgia doesn't’t extend to just memories of one element. When I think of my favourite footballers of the past, it’s a flurry of names and images. I think football history is important to the sports culture."

The project has been picked up by many top design magazines such as JOIA Art and also football titles such as Four Four Two and Match of the Day. But his skills don't just cover illustrations of footballers, commissions from leading technology title Wired, Hip-Hop mag Vibe and ESPN magazine cover everything from Beyonce to Baseball.

 
Prints from the 'Playmaker' collection and other footballers are available from Nyari's website www.iamdany.com What do you think of Daniel Nyari's illustrations? Let us know. Join the conversation online, on Twitter and on Facebook.