Teale's 'tache

6 minutes ago, Stephen_Evans said:

I was more admiring how you have managed to do all the great designs to share with us in your spare time while all the badge dramas have unfolded.  Apologies if that is not how it came across.  

No problem, I'm a bit sleep-deprived at the moment, apologies for getting the wrong end of the stick on that one.

9 minutes ago, Stephen_Evans said:

You still have your job?

I do, but I'm not as successful as you and your comedy career obviously... 

12 hours ago, MrBlack said:

A more constructive version of my previous comment...

There's potential here. The detail in the mane is good, the muscular looking chest and arm make him look a imposing.

Think its the angle of the head and the tongue that make it look like he's about to spew. 

Made it look a bit less pukey and stood it up a bit straighter. Something is still not right though, think the proportions are maybe a little too human...

I'll probably leave it there, got work to do.

I got a bit bored waiting for the announcement, so I thought I'd have a play at improving the lion, trying to get a bit more movement and make it more regal...

Moral of the story? Lions that scale down are really difficult to get right...

14 minutes ago, est1874 said:

Spurs are so **** lucky. Any other club loses their superstar, regardless of how much they get for him, they have a dud season of rebuilding etc. Like we had with Jack leaving

Spurs sell Kane and somehow get better, and now get to reinvest all that money on the future. It's one rule for words removed and another for the rest of us.

I'm not sure it's luck, they invested in a new stadium and took the hit while it was being built, but because of it they have now doubled their income on matchdays and are near if not the top in terms of earnings for each game. They've steadily sold players for big money, but stayed at a similar level,  so recruitment, although mixed and occasionally wasteful, has been generally successful over a long period of time. In theory, they have loads of room in terms of FFP from the Kane sale and large income streams.

The only things they've done wrong is not to win anything, and to keep changing managers at a high cost.

I'd say the only luck involved was being able to use Wembley while their new stadium was built, but that's more just taking advantage of their location.

Essentially, they just took advantage when they got in the top 4 and the extra money it brings in. I hope we can too should we be there at the end of the season.

27 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

My thing is, even if it WAS purchased from Shutterstock ( It wasn't ) then what would be the issue lol.

Those sites are literally meant to provide design resources and aids, which people can then use as inspiration and nucleus of a design to build on.

People are just desperate to find any sort of excuse to slam Heck/ the process etc.

Paying a design agency 500,000 pounds to design a vector similar to what you could get on Shutterstock doesn't make it any more prestigious... It makes it stupid

The issue would be that anyone could purchase a license for that same lion from Shutterstock and do whatever they wanted with it, and we'd have absolutely no leg to stand on from a legal point of view.

With a brand as big as ours you want protection over your image/brand.

Having a lion custom made and copywrited protects you from having your lion plastered all over porn sites, or another club hijacking our popularity by adopting the same lion etc.

2 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I don't think he's done that at all. I think you're twisting it

Just calling it as I see it, I do not need to twist anything, but you're most welcome to ignore my opinion.

Just now, Muller Yogurt Long Sleever said:

Me too. The crazy thing is it's fundamentally the new one - it could have been made from the same brief, but this is made professionally. AAAAGGGGHHHH

Depends on the brief, if you're not allowed to change the colours, lion or star (which I think might of been the case, I mean why else would you keep them?!) then this design wouldn't fill the criteria and nor would pretty much all the fan made designs we see/have made.

20 minutes ago, Jas10 said:

He may have put them together quite quickly as a demonstration… could easily be improved with a bit of tinkering.

 

I mean this in the nicest possible way… but I prefer them to your AV design too…

 

Something a bit different and “fresh”

and really pops off the shirt… a good starting point I think…

 

Regardless, his critiques are all relevant 

Mate, you are entitled to your opinion, I'm not going to be offended by it. But I am also entitled to mine.

I think it's good, but far from perfect and I will always strive for better.

11 minutes ago, Jas10 said:

A detailed critique that outlines all of the faults and where and how improvements could be made… from a professional with 25 years experience and lifelong Villa fan…

 

Though I agree with most of his critique, I'm not overly impressed with the crest options he's produced, better than we're getting for sure, but his designs have their own issues.

Again a lot depends on the brief, evolution or redesign, the difference in restrictions make a huge difference.

I've explained previously from a design perspective that a round badge isn't optimal for a few reasons.

But, from a fan point of view, I understand it's a far more complex matter, as it ties in with a short period of incredible success for the club. However, some seem to forget we bobbed around not doing much after that and also got relegated with it, so it's not like it only brought success. It was rightly changed in the early 90's as it looked very dated by then, very 80's, and in the 90's everyone seemed very keen to distance themselves from the eighties like it was some kind of bad fever dream.

Nowadays, with the retro appeal and a relative starving of success, it's not all that surprising so many are pining for a round crest.

9 minutes ago, thabucks said:

You made the point way better than I did earlier with the examples of the mosaic for instance. The new crest will require less work to incorporate given its only tweaking the shape and not letter spacing etc with the round badge. 

Just to add this I previously posted the below in reply to someone:

Quote

An example:

Imagine for a moment that we have paper sheets we use at the ground to wrap the hot dogs/burgers/pies etc. in, and that paper has a pattern of the Lerner crest on it. Now consider how many of those we might have in stock, 100k? 250k to last a season maybe? Possibly we bought millions a couple of years back thinking the crest wouldn't change for a long time. With a complete rebrand, all that stock goes in the bin, but with an evolution, you can keep using these paper sheets until they run out as the two crests are similar enough to be part of the same brand. 

Now take that example and apply it to thousands of other lines we have in place and you can see how the cost is less up front and spreads out as the old badge is phased out over several years. They'll likely change the crest in places where it is most visible straight away, but we'll still be seeing the Lerner crest for a few years.

In addition to the above, there may be supplier contracts that can be allowed to run their course rather than straight cancelled which would likely involve cost as well.

Brand evolutions can be good, and environmentally better as there is less waste, but they depend on the current brand not having glaring issues such as ours.

45 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

I dont understand why we care about the cost saving of a brand evolution rather than redesign is a factor.

Those costs don't affect our FFP position in the PL or the wage ratio requirements of Uefa.

Why save money here, its not like we can then spent it on players instead anyway?

Going the full rebrand route let's us drop what we had, have a new "crisp" version that gets a associated with our first season back the champions league and we use it to build our reputation on. Keep the crappy yellow on light blue and we then are forever cursed with a logo that doesnt stand out from its background and curses us for decades more.

I don't get it.

I struggle a little with this as well, but I'd guess our owners have a budget of what they are willing to spend on us year on year, like any of the other businesses they run, and we have to be at least near that budget.

They may have near-infinite wealth between them, but they don't afford us an infinite budget, which is perfectly reasonable.

17 minutes ago, DakotaVilla said:

There is no way in the world he would have been given any sensitive data until he signed his contract and had started his role. That’s just basic employment law.

At the end of the day it’s all conjecture so we can either believe that a, Heck did this as his first act because of self imposed cost constraints or b, he just thought he could do better and totally and utterly buggered it up, as he buggered up the AV150 mark, and as he buggered up the Holte suite etc etc etc. 
 

 

There is every way in the world, it's common for data to be used in an interview process, especially at a high level such as this.

I wouldn't be surprised if the owners consulted Heck with concerns about the figures for the rebrand and in part employed him based on his response.

It is all conjecture, I'm just looking logically looking for reasons rather than blindly trying to attribute blame.

We have amazing owners, but it should come as no surprise that they will pull projects if they are not financially viable, that's just good business and they are good businessmen. I have no idea why people find that so hard to believe.

I'm done with this, I've neither the time nor the hunger to argue with you or @Captain_Townsend any further, believe whatever you want.

3 minutes ago, Captain_Townsend said:

No, he deferred it immediately.  There was smewnt to be a big launch for the final home game and it got cancelled. Then he announced the round badge would be on the shirt only then in September that it would be replaced. 

Well, then the launch was delayed until the numbers were crunched and clarified, he may have taken one look and thought 'We need a second opinion on that figure'.

Also, he may well have been sounded out and presented with some of this data long in advance of his appointment.

7 minutes ago, DakotaVilla said:

I respect the arguments made but I refuse to believe cost was a factor in the crest redesign. Heck pulled the roundel immediately on arrival so he had no time to undertake any proper ROI due diligence.
 

Also the owners have never held back any investment, they were hardly going to start pinching pounds on the clubs new branding. 
 

I believe, after a quick Google, Heck was appointed in May 2023 and the crest was announced as cancelled in September 2023, seems plenty of time to have crunched the numbers to me.

I agree that the owners have never held back on investment, but at the same time, successful business people do not endlessly plough money into a project without considering if they'll get it back at some point, if the figures don't add up they'll pull the plug.

44 minutes ago, Jas10 said:

Yeah but… why did NSWE allow us to go ahead with the round badge, have it on shirts, show it basically everywhere?

That doesn’t suggest that we were ever looking at a cost cutting exercise…

Things didn’t change until Heck arrived and he seems fully responsible for all the decisions and cancellations… he is wielding a lot of power… hope he can manage it properly but he’s not making a good first impression at all… does come across as quite arrogant and ignorant too but I don’t want to place definitive judgement on him this soon either…

I'll speculate on why, but this is just speculation so please keep that in mind.

I would imagine at the beginning of the process Purslow, the owners, or whoever suggested we needed a rebrand, then most likely Purslow as CEO, went out and costed the project, how much would it cost to have the design created and rolled out everywhere in one go? Let's call that figure A, he'd also probably crunched some numbers to figure out a rough 'ROI' (Return On Investment), let's call that figure B.

Purslow presented this to the owners, and everybody agreed the figures were far enough apart to make it worthwhile, a budget was set, and the project was green-lit. Purslow goes and hires a design company and the process begins, design is produced, fans are consulted, and everybody is happy by and large.

Now Purslow leaves and Heck comes in with a remit to make and to save us money. He looks at the figures and he believes that figure A is far too low, it's going to cost a lot more to roll out the new brand than Purslow anticipated, and quite possibly figure B is a bit on the optimistic side, so he believes as somebody who has worked more in the field of branding than Purslow that the figures are much closer together, he takes this to the owners explaining the additional costs and the effects it will have, how much extra budget might be needed to continue and possibly at this point the roundel crest gets canned, and they then try to figure out a more cost-effective way to refresh the brand.

Projects like these do get paused, cancelled, or scaled back all the time, partly because figures A and B are both difficult to calculate with any degree of accuracy.

Unfortunately, this has been a very public process in a very passionate industry, and so somebody is going to have to get it in the neck, Heck is taking the heat for it at the moment and if he's got his figures wrong then he should, but if he's right then possibly not.

Again to clarify, this is just speculation, I have no inside knowledge, I've just seen projects be scaled back or ended for this kind of situation before so it lines up in my mind.  

Edit: As @NurembergVillan has mentioned previously, the kits are produced way in advance, so I'm guessing the process had already started before Purslow left and Heck came in. Hence why we have that badge on our shirts this season.

18 minutes ago, fightoffyour said:

I agree with what you're saying and trust your insights here as a designer, but working within the restrictions of a brand evolution was never the initial remit.

You have now deduced that the remit has become an evolution due to cost cutting based on the design that we've seen, and again I believe you here because it's the only plausible explanation, but the remit should still be a total rebranding rather than an evolution (and I'm not arguing with you here, I'm sure you and almost everybody else agrees). Especially given the 150th anniversary, new found success, NSWE era...

Exactly, it's the change of brief that disappoints me the most.

The crest they've produced isn't that bad once you understand the restrictions in place.

As a designer I've seen plenty of good brands and the effect good branding can have, so I was very excited and hopeful that we'd be getting something that could really push the club to the next level in terms of attracting sponsors, fans and marketing, and just to finally put an end to this awful disjointed brand that has been holding us back.

To still be stuck pretty much where we were, after all the faffing around and money wasted, is just very very poor in my view.

1 hour ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Yeah that’s fine.

Although I don’t remember the feedback saying the club name had to go at the bottom of the badge. Or to keep the less good version of the lion. Both of these are two of the bigger issues with this new badge. 

What were the restrictions we gave them for the AV150 badge/emblem thing? As far as I’m aware, we didn’t give them ANY specific requirements, it’s still come out looking terrible.

1 hour ago, fightoffyour said:

Also the main restriction was to change the colours from yellow on baby blue and they didn't do that.

I believe what we are being given, judging by the crest we've seen, is a brand evolution rather than a total rebrand.

If this is the case then there are definitely more restrictions than just the ones outlined in the results of the survey, and you have to start with the Lerner crest and go from there.

I'd imagine they couldn't change the lion, the direction it is facing, or the star as that would kill too much branding already out there, they also likely couldn't change the colours as it would be too big a change and take the new design too far away from the Lerner crest for them to feel part of the same brand. The reason they need to feel part of the same brand is so you can phase out the Lerner badge gradually over time rather than outright change everything in one go. There'd have to be a shield shape at least similar to the original. Then add the questionnaire restrictions and you can see how the designers have been very restricted in what they can do.

The text being top or bottom is a bit overblown for me, both can work and both can look unbalanced, it's the '1874' that's causing most of the balance issues in my opinion.

The AV150, again in my opinion, is a good idea with good colours, it's just poorly executed, it should be more obvious what it is supposed to say. Also, launching that marque on its own, on Twitter, on the day the fans find out about the North Stand project being put on hold really made a bad first impression and those are difficult to shake.

I'm not defending the crest we've seen, I'm not happy about it, even with the restrictions in place it could be better, I'm just trying to explain why the fan-made designs (my own included) haven't been working to the same restrictions and so it's much easier to make something more desirable.

22 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

A random thought, do we reckon that, some of the fan designs are very good, and the big agencies or designers go out of their way, to make things totally different from fan designs, just to not be seen as " copying " ?

Which ends up in us having wonky shit?

Obviously everybody is on social media so people see these.

Fan designs work to whatever restrictions they want, for example a fan design can drop the star or 1874 and people will say it looks clean, but the survey dictates to the actual designers that they have to be there, if there were no restrictions I'm certain we'd be looking at an entirely different and likely much better design.

5 hours ago, DakotaVilla said:

There is zero evidence. Absolutely zero to suggest that this crest was limited due to lack of investment or by cost cutting measures. This quite frankly is pocket change to Wes and Nas who are trying to build a global club network. The last thing they would do is turn around to Heck - apparently the best sports branding exec in the world according to some  - and say do it on the cheap by copying the disliked Lerner badge (a fact well known within the Villa community) in our 150th anniversary year. 

People are for some reason are desperately trying to explain away Heck’s sheer incompetence. 

I'm using the evidence of my eyes and engaging a bit of logic.

The lion, star and colours are intentionally the same so they don't have to change every single part of branding and marketing materials.

A brand evolution is cheaper to roll out than a complete rebrand, and this is a brand evolution.

A brand evolution can be a good thing in some cases.

An example:

Imagine for a moment that we have paper sheets we use at the ground to wrap the hot dogs/burgers/pies etc. in, and that paper has a pattern of the Lerner crest on it. Now consider how many of those we might have in stock, 100k? 250k to last a season maybe? Possibly we bought millions a couple of years back thinking the crest wouldn't change for a long time. With a complete rebrand, all that stock goes in the bin, but with an evolution, you can keep using these paper sheets until they run out as the two crests are similar enough to be part of the same brand. 

Now take that example and apply it to thousands of other lines we have in place and you can see how the cost is less up front and spreads out as the old badge is phased out over several years. They'll likely change the crest in places where it is most visible straight away, but we'll still be seeing the Lerner crest for a few years.

So it can be a good cost-saving exercise and is also better environmentally as there is less waste. However, the fundamental problem in this instance is that our brand is crap to begin with, and has a glaring flaw in the colour scheme that a brand evolution cannot correct. At some point, it needs fixing, for whatever reason the decision has been made that it won't be now.

Why the club has taken this route I don't know, I don't know enough about the financial side of the club to speculate, I doubt we'll get a straight answer out of Mr Heck and I doubt they'll come out and sell it as the cheaper option.

Heck may well be incompetent, but the crest we are getting is the result of a business decision.

19 minutes ago, sne said:

Nice. But wouldn't it have been cheaper to stick with the round badge they already paid for? Or is it used in so few places that it wouldn't have mattered?

The round badge is only on kits/training gear which change every year anyway, so the cost of replacing it is negligible. The cost of keeping it and rolling out everywhere is a lot, I read a figure of around £10m somewhere, but I forget where.