I love illustrated sports posters. Most of today’s sports posters are photographic; as a photographer, I appreciate the phenomenal sports photography that is possible with today’s equipment. But illustration can capture how a sport feels in addition to how it looks. Additionally, photos are of specific people; illustrations are often of generic athletes.

Women’s sports especially lack poster art. If we are to infer how women feel when they are playing sports from the existing posters, one would learn that (1) women are playing sports to flirt with men, (2) women are playing sports to be sexy, and (3) women are playing sports to show off clothing. There are some notable exceptions, but these categories dominated my search for distinctive women’s posters. Men’s posters (and good women’s posters) show the joy of movement and conflict and success. They show admirable members of a team effort. That’s how I feel when I play.

Fun sports poster design!

Motion, motion, motion! The people in these posters are joyful and powerful, people that the viewer looks up to or wants to be.

Bizarre women’s poster design

Many of these posters are pleasing enough in isolation, but these kinds of posters make up the majority of women’s sports posters. They model clothes, they sell bicycles, they show women doing elegant jumps that have no relation to motion that happens in the sport. They’re women as decoration, objects to admire rather than people to relate to.

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Posters today

Many of my example posters are decades old. As I said, modern design hews toward photography, so these outdated images of women’s sport remain the few illustrated examples. As a lady athlete, I want beautiful art of my sport and other ladies sports.

Over the years, I’ve done several posters and t-shirts for my women’s water polo teams. Sometimes it’s as simple as a strap over the shoulder. It’s not a huge thing, but I like to feel like I’m included in the representation of the sport. I want to find art where people that look like me are moving with joy, rather than posing cutely. I want to see images of women in action, images that invite girls to imagine that it could be a poster of them.