Teale's 'tache

Think it was Mother Design or something like that, remember having a look at some of their work and it was very impressive. No idea if they are who we are using now though.

As long as we paid them I'm not sure they will be all that bothered. Maybe slightly disappointed if we'd talked up more branding work in the future, but if we wanted to pay for them to have another go I'm sure to they'd be more than happy to take our money again.

I think both variations work, and both have advantages/disadvantages. I like claret background with a gold lion as it looks very classy and a lion being gold makes sense, however the blue background with a claret lion stands out more on our home strip which is probably the most important placement for our brand and it contains more of our main colours. I can see the arguments for both.

This was my most recent effort for those that are interested

@Ingers is this the one you mean?

I think it's important to note that we don't know what restrictions are in place for the designers of the 'Heck crest', if as I believe, that crest is a brand evolution, rather than the revolution we all hoped for, then things like changing the lion, colours, removing the star may not have been an option for them, because it would kill too much of the current branding in place. They may have been extremely limited in what they could actually change. So as nice as it is to put together all of these designs, and I've done plenty too, we aren't working to the same restrictions, the same briefs, as the actual designers. As an example, you've dropped the star from your designs, and I agree that it probably shouldn't be there, but all of the surveys the fans have done say it has to be on there, the same with the 1874, and the same with using the full name. I'm no fan of the Heck crest, but as a designer, I do get a bit protective over some of the criticism being dished out over some of these crests, because we don't know the brief that has been set, it doesn't matter how good a design agency is, if you put too many restrictions in place there's only so many places they can go. As an example I also think that Dragon Rouge, the company that designed this season's roundel, would have done a much better job with fewer restrictions put in place, it feels like part of the reason they switched the direction of the lion is that it was one of the few things they could do. Their brief from the fan surveys was basically 'design by numbers', with little scope for creativity. We paid a lot of money to them and then practically designed the thing ourselves, what a waste of money and creative talent. Sorry, I hope this doesn't feel like I'm having a go, it's not meant in that way, I'm enjoying seeing your designs so please do keep producing them, I just feel the need to stand up for fellow designers who may be getting unfair criticism.

Good spot! My brain is full of flu and I'm off on holiday next week so I'm not running at full capacity right now!

That would depend on the font family, if it has that variation or not, and it might help a little, however, the horizontal space of the 'I' is never going to be close to the horizontal space of say the letter 'O' in this case, there are always going to be differences, the thing is some letter combinations just work better and the spacing is less noticeable than others. I'm not sure what the font face is we are using, or if it is a custom-made one, if it was custom you'd like to think they'd use 'Aston Villa' as a starting point and use every trick to get that to balance and then go through the rest of the characters, but then, full disclosure, I'm not a font face designer.

So, what has happened here is that the kerning (spacing between the letters) on the word 'Aston' is different to the kerning on the word 'Villa', and the reason for this is that the designer wants both words to take up the same amount of horizontal space so that the lion will sit in the center of the image. The problem is that the characters in the word 'Aston' take up a lot more horizontal space than the letters in the word 'Villa' hence the noticeable difference in the spacing. If you were to have both with the same kerning the word 'Villa' would appear much shorter and there would be a lot more space on the right hand side and so everything would look very unbalanced. Ways to solve this, you could maybe use a different font family if the brand allows, where the characters take up a more similar amount of space as you mention, you could possibly increase the kerning on both further as this can make the difference in spacing less obvious while keeping everything centered, or simply find another way to make the image balance, like maybe stacking the lion, the word Aston and the word Villa on top of each other. The name 'Aston Villa' feels like it should have a nice balance with two words of six letters, but from a graphic design point of view, it's not that easy to work with. Edit: Just noticed the tweet in question has only taken part of a complete graphic, when all the other components are added there is much more balance and the difference in spacing much less noticeable.

I believe we are playing them in Chicago, the flags represent the different countries we are playing in rather than the teams we are playing. As the article on the website states https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2024/april/25/villa-confirm-summer-pre-season-schedule/

Think of it like this, the detailed crest, most likely will be used on something physical, like the side of a building, or a rubber badge on a kit like we've had before, and like in the render we've all seen, anywhere the badge or lion is big enough for the details to be seen. The drop shadow version will be used in all the other places where we want the crest to be full colour, but it's too small to see the detailing, online/digital mainly, and then the monotone no shadow version will be used in various other places where needed. They are all the same crest, all part of the same brand, but each use case decides which one will be used. There will be a brand guidelines document that sets out which one to use and where. I have to follow these kinds of documents in my job quite often and they can be very specific, including the amount of white space that must sit around wherever you use the logo etc.

It makes plenty of sense, lots of brands have multiple variations of the same logo for various use cases. It's not a separate badge just a variation of. In this instance the detailed one seems to exist simply for protecting the trademark after that render with the gold lion appeared, I don't expect the detailed one to be used much because there aren't many use cases for it. Also, remember none of these have been officially released, just trademarked, it's not like we are going around chucking 4/5 different crest on all of our branding. In fact, we've been very consistent in using the Lerner crest for everything apart from the kits and training gear, which is what we were told would happen. The 150 marque is being used as a marque should be, what we have control of, we have by and large controlled, but we can't control what others do so easily, at least not until we have just one crest as part of our brand that has had time to bed in. I'm no fan of the new design, or the communication/process of it. In my opinion it isn't even the final form of whatever Heck and his team envisage the crest to finally be, it's just an evolution from the Lerner crest in the direction of that final form. It's a brand evolution rather than a revolution.

It is a really interesting article and it highlights some of the points I've mentioned previously about conserving energy. It gives me hope that what we are doing is more sustainable than the likes of Newcastle, a high-intensity press resulting in a lot of chaotic high-energy games is not sustainable, as they are finding out with injuries/tiredness and additional games in Europe really having had a detrimental effect on their season. We've also had a bad season for injuries, but it does feel more like bad luck than anything else, Mings, Buendia, Ramsey and Moreno's injuries were all pretty much before the season started, so not through being overworked, we've had a few muscle injuries (Torres, Digne) but nowhere near the extent of Newcastle and I'd imagine less than most teams. Kamara's injury could happen to anyone at any time really. The fact we are still going strong at this late stage, without really being able to rotate much because of injuries is incredible when you think about it. Emery is very experienced in managing league and European workloads, and it's really impressive how his system accommodates these rest periods in-game. I hope articles like this crop up a bit more and continue to educate the fans about what we are trying to do, I think the crowd have got a lot better at understanding the need for playing it out from the back, and are a lot more patient than they used to be. I think any team that wants to consistently challenge the top 4 places has to be very savvy in the transfer market, because you can't compete with those above/around you thanks to FFP, and you have to manage the gruelling Europa, or Conference League campaign that you invariably get on your way up the ladder. Emery has proven to be brilliant at both so far. He's just doing an incredible job and deserves every bit of praise that comes his way.

Balls to that, lock him up until he signs a lifetime contract. If he really loves us he'll sign it and he'll never leave...

For those wondering how the new Betano logo would look on a shirt...

Plenty of clubs change their crest, probably more often than you think, usually though, it's just tweaks or refinements that a lot of people, especially those not associated with the club don't notice. As a case in point, the refinements made to the original Lerner design were barely noticed by the wider football community, indeed some places still use the original design with no idea it was updated ages ago. It's easy to say 'let's just stick with something', but you have to have something worth sticking to first. The clubs that don't change are those that have solid designs. Our problem is we've never really had a design worth keeping, and so we keep changing and will continue to do so until we bite the bullet and create a genuinely good design. How possible that is with the amount of fan consultation demanded is another matter of course.

Just to clarify it is Kaizen Gaming website that is using the new crest, not the Villa website. Chris Heck and the AVFC Official accounts have tweeted out the exact same graphic, but with the Lerner crest, which is likely correct according to our branding as it is right now. I would guess we've sent Kaizen two graphics, one with the Lerner crest to be used now and one with the new crest to be used later, once the new crest has been launched, but Kaizen have uploaded the wrong one to their website. That is just a guess though based on the graphics looking otherwise identical. This is the problem with keeping everything 'on brand' you have to rely on other people to do their jobs correctly. If we just had one crest this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

I've been looking at the same area thinking it does look about the right size, and obviously right next to where we are now, but there's an awful lot of people that would have to be moved, as well as a school potentially. Not going to be cheap or easy to get hold of that many properties.

This crossed my mind as well, I can't remember exactly what happened with the Emirates, but I think there was something about some of those Highbury apartments being used to sweeten the deal for residents who needed moving for the new stadium to be built, I may be misremembering, but if we were looking at buying say everything in the area between Witton Lane and the railway, then temporarily rehousing many of those people somewhere with the promise of eventual apartments built on the current site could make it more of a possibility. This would also allow us to use Villa Park whilst building a new stadium 'next door' on a bigger site essentially, and then the old ground gets converted into apartments like Highbury and the old residents move back into shiny new apartments. It's a more morally acceptable way of moving some people than the way Liverpool handled it, but not perfect for everyone I'd imagine I'm just spitballing obviously, no idea what the plans are going to be, but it's good fun guessing.

In my experience getting new tools and borrowing some more still leaves plenty of room for procrastination and the project being delayed until next bank holiday, let's hope Villa are much more efficient than me when it comes to DIY!

Well, this is all very interesting and exciting. It seems Heck is off the hook for the North Stand 'pause', considering the people and investment being brought in close to the owners, it seems very unlikely he'd be the driving force behind it and not the owners themselves. Certainly looks like we have grander plans now, whether that is on the current site or elsewhere. That decision might not even have been made yet, we may be looking at building multiple business cases for both. My gut feeling is they want to stay on or near the current site, but a lot depends on how much room their plans will need and how much of that we can get at a reasonable price. I think the main thing to take from this is that our owner's ambitions aren't limited to just on the pitch, they mean business.

I like the guy, he's got something about him. Given how the loan had gone up until about a month ago, and the stuff that has came out regarding his life off the field, it would have been easy for him to just see out this season and start making plans to go home. Plenty of loans have gone that way before. But he's not done that, he's got his head down, he's worked hard, and he's made some contributions when we've needed it. He still wants it to work, he's still fighting for it and you've got to respect that. I don't think we've seen the best of him, but yesterday he was excellent. I don't know if we'll make it permanent, that's for the Mister to decide, but I do think he's due a bit of respect. He's with us until the end of the season and he has more contributions to make, so let's give him some love.

I think the point is it shouldn't be either/or, those that want a beer should be able to get one without missing any of the game. I'm sure we'd sell a lot more food and drinks at games if it didn't take so long. If we want to maximise revenues at Villa Park then the service is one of many things that need to improve.

Where Bailey and Torres are concerned, we don't know what kind of injuries they are carrying or how close to the 'red line' they may have been, in Torres case certainly we seem to be managing him since his last spell out, so I don't think whatever that injury was has fully cleared, and it probably won't until it can be properly rested over the summer. So we are going to have to manage him carefully. I think Unai probably thought a draw was possible if not overly likely with the team he picked and the subs he intended to make in the second half, he believes in the players he put out there, unfortunately, losing Martinez was a big blow to our plans (though Olsen did great, it's the presence and organisation we missed), and we conceded at bad times (just before half-time, just before making the subs), all of that took the wind out of our sails and the machine that is Man City smelt blood, it happens. The scoreline was not ideal, and he won't be happy with the goals conceded, but getting minutes to some that needed it is good, good showings from Iroegbunam, Duran, Rogers and Zaniolo are encouraging, and Olsen too. At some point, we really need to rest Dougie, but Kamara's injury and McGinn's suspension have made it very difficult to do so. It will be interesting to see how Emery approaches that going forward. Nobody likes to lose, Unai especially, but he's realistic enough to know it can happen against very good teams when we aren't anywhere near full strength.