The FIFA World Cup is one of the biggest events in the sporting calendar. Every four years, 32 countries come together in one to compete for the pride and glory of one Cup. The event takes the World by storm with billions watching the event while many companies use the event as a marketing opportunity, either directly or indirectly.

This year is no different and the World Cup finally kicks off today after years of preparation in the capital of South Africa, Johannesburg, where the local team will take on Mexico.

Four years ago (pretty much to the day), I had the idea of downloading all the World Cup fixtures into my Outlook calendar by developing a small website using the hCalendar Microformat and Brian Suda’s X2V parser.

Little did I know I was on to a winner when the website quickly got promoted by all the big social networks at the time (remember Digg?), even the Guardian and Yahoo! saw fit to make a feature of the website, driving traffic up to an average of 10,000 visitors a day. All this contributed to quite a successful project which motivated me further to pursue football calendars.

Over the years, I’ve dabbled in a few other projects of a similar nature: I built 6 Nations KickOff after a suggestion from Owen, collaborated with Klaus and Gareth on Euro KickOff, launched F1 Calendar with Andy and even worked with UEFA on a bespoke calendar service for their website.

All this built up to last Friday though when, after months of blood, sweat and tears, I relaunched World Cup KickOff for South Africa 2010.

It has to be said the project has been a labour of love and torment. I started the design process back in September 2009, knowing full well that I had to get this right. Having worked on multiple calendar based solutions, I was fully aware of the issues presented and what users come to expect from such a service.

Timezones are always an issue to combat, especially with the inconsistencies between countries around the globe adopting Daylight Saving Time. By setting the timezone in the calendar event, user’s calendar software should automatically recalculate the time to their local timezone. I wanted to keep the website solution as simple as possible so decided to avoid confusing users with the timezone filter.

Since 2006, software and mobile devices have become a lot more versatile in the ability to subscribe to remote calendars. The most popular devices to adopt such technology comes from Apple with iPhones, iPads and Macs all supporting remote calendars in their iCal software. With this shift in calendar logic, it seemed natural to push the subscription functionality to users more than the download functionality (which lacks the ability of automatic updates).

One of the biggest selling points on the original World Cup KickOff was the ability to filter your calendar by country. For Euro KickOff, we extended this to Group & Stage, Venue and Date. This seemed to be an underlying factor to the success of this service so it was clear this feature was necessary for World Cup 2010.

However, for me, the primary call to actions were Download and Subscribe, so I gave these features prominent position before the filters. Some would argue that the process should be in reverse but, as a fan of the World Cup in general, I was confident the majority of vistors to the website would be interested in the entire competition, not just for their country.

When it came to the actual aesthetics and design, I really struggled to find a style I was happy with. There must have been over ten attempts that were just binned. It was only in the last month or two where I found a style I continually looked back on and didn’t find fault with it (always a good sign for a designer).

I wanted to portray the natural essence of (South) Africa with a slightly aged design, hence the softened hue of the green, cream and black colours used. Personally, I’ve recently been fond of retro styles, with designs relying heavily on clean and clear typography wrapped in solid blocks to get a message across. Thankfully, after a couple of sneaky peaks on design hub Dribbble, I got some really constructive and positive feedback from the design elite which confirmed I was on to a winner.

As with most of my recent projects, I adopted the popular 960 Grid System to ensure the layout worked on as many desktop environments as possible. By breaking the grid into three equal columns of 300 pixels with 20 pixel gutters, the layout had a solid structure with plenty of room in each column for legibility.

I was conscious of the amount of space required to display all the necessary information for match fixtures; with a date, time, two countries, a venue and grouping for each fixture, it seemed logical to present the information in a tabular grid. During earlier prototypes, I considered alternative layouts, such as replicating football tickets, but this took up too much screen real estate so the idea was binned. In the end, a table spanning two columns made more sense and allowed for enough room to fit all the information on a single row.

The final stages of the project came together naturally with all the information gathered, the functionality finalised and design guidelines complete. Running up to the launch, there were plenty of nervous moments, panicking about meeting the deadline. Thanks to support from some close and helpful friends (hat-tip to Charles, Brian, Cole and Paul), it all came together and launched with minimal fuss.

As per usual, it’s been a real pleasure working on this project. I’m really proud of what has been accomplished but also look forward to building on World Cup KickOff and other sports calendar websites in the future. The framework is coming together nicely and could easily be applied to other sports. No doubt, though, I’ll find fault with what currently exists and will continue to refine the system and process.

It’s a new year so time for another season of sports fixtures, all delivered directly to your calendar applications.

Over the last few years, you may have noticed I’ve been building quite a collection of sports-related calendar services which allow you to download or subscribe to certain sports fixtures throughout the year, making it easier to organise your social life. This year is no different.

6 Nations

The first sporting event of the year we’ll be embracing is the 6 Nations rugby competition between the Home Nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland), France and Italy. This all kicks off on Saturday 6th February 2010 between Ireland and Italy at Croke Park and continues through to Saturday 20th March 2010.

To make sure you don’t miss any fixtures, download or subscribe to the 6 Nations fixtures calendar. Not much has changed on the website since last year with regards to design or functionality but, if you have any ideas for improvements, don’t hesitate to send them through.

Formula 1

Just as the 6 Nations competition comes to an end, the Formula 1 season will be starting with the Bahrain Grand Prix in Sakhir on Sunday 14th March 2010.

Working with the talented Andy Higgs, we’ve now updated the website inline with the new season and you’re now able to download or subscribe to the Formula 1 season calendar for 2010.

We’ve got a few improvements planned for the user interface later in the year but, to make sure you don’t miss any of the schedule, the calendar is readily available.

UEFA Champions League & Europa League

Last year, a team of us including Brian Suda - the inspiration behind all these calendar services - worked directly with UEFA on a dedicated solution for delivering the entire fixture schedule as downloadable UEFA calendar files, for both the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Cup (now know as the UEFA Europa League). Users were also able to access individual club calendars to focus specifically on a club of interest.

The original service was so well received, UEFA were keen to build on the service and offered us an opportunity to extend the functionality for the new season. Our proposal for Phase 2 was well received by the organisation and their Media & Technology department so we are now in full swing on the improved system architecture and additional functionality, scheduled for a three phase rollout over the next six months.

Everyone involved in the project is really excited about some of the upcoming functionality and, hopefully, the large user demographic will enjoy it as much as we will.

World Cup 2010

On the 11th June, the biggest football tournament in the World starts in South Africa - World Cup 2010.

With the huge success of the original World Cup KickOff - the first sports-based calendar service we built - we would have been foolish to ignore this opportunity.

Work has already began on the updated solution with Gareth Brown (from One Black Bear) working on the user interface while Brian and I continue to work on the development.

We’re also lining up an interesting partnership with London startup which should add some really special value to the user experience. It’s too early to say at this stage but, needless to say, it is going to be exciting.

We’re planning to launch this project for May 2010, giving you a month or so to plan your World Cup social calendar. If we can release it sooner, we certainly will but it’s better to be realistic than optimistic some times - best follow @worldcupko on Twitter for updates