0Lamptey

I think this on topic, in how this issue is being dealt with by another Club, compared to the handling by Villa.

Interesting that the Bournemouth President of Business Operations, Jim Frevola, immediately responded to the news stories about their crest change on Twitter.

https://x.com/jimfrevola/status/1761830730361983339?s=20

"Nothing to see here. The trademark logo people are reading about today is all part of securing our logos for future use (think retail ). We wouldn’t consider changing this primary beauty of a badge without significant fan consultation"

The Euros kits, likely to be launched in the Spring (and subject to recent leaks) give a good indication about the next wave of Adidas shirt construction / general template.

...But it will be interesting how far they push the wider merchandising. There's so much potential.

Arsenal, United, and Newcastle all have a history with the brand, so they can mine a rich seam of heritage. United and Arsenal do frequent re-make releases of classic shirts. I'm sure we will see the mid-90s Newcastle shirts  get the same treatment. 

They also seem to do an 'Icon' series for the Elite tier teams every year inspired by a particular era. 

I'd love to see to see some 'alternate history' 70s, 80s and 90s style retro Villa kits using the classic Adidas templates of the time. 

Lot's to get excited about. 

Adidas recent highlights reel:

They seem to be in a real design peak at the moment. Some very simple / classic designs, plus some that push the envelope. I hope we get the long sleeve versions. 

4 minutes ago, mikeyjavfc said:

The badge being a turd is one thing, but the comms are absolutely terrible. Still no announcement or clarification regarding the new badge a week after it was leaked. 

A huge coincidence that just as a significant negative reaction to both the trademarked crest and the handing of the consultation process is building up, a big new deal with Adidas is reported by a major news publication. 

14 hours ago, Muller Yogurt Long Sleever said:

Working in design and as a Villa fan, the brand identity means a huge amount and it would be a privilege to work on it. That’s why a lot of us can’t (and rightly won’t) let it lie. So a rant, albeit hopefully a constructive one.

Looking back on the last two goes at it:

The previous 2015/2016 version - by a top tier design agency with football club creds, almost certainly working with limitations of an evolution brief, with fan input. Not sure why the colours weren’t sorted, and the ‘Lerner’ crest certainly wasn’t universally liked; but the full lion was beautifully crafted (not so good in 2D), there was a bespoke font and iconography with claw marks and as a coherent body of work, it mostly worked. Elegant, heritage-based, but modern.

Last year’s version - by a top tier design agency with football club creds, I assume working with a more open-minded brief but with fan feedback about elements, which would seem to have limited their thinking and scope somewhat. A well-drawn 2D lion, nicely crafted typeface, presented in two shape options. Fan vote was round badge - and overall it’s well-executed and works. Classic but modern. (Despite me thinking a circle isn’t right for us, but that’s just opinion.)

Both would’ve come at considerable cost (although probably half of Lucas Digne’s weekly wage. Player budget vs marking budget are in different galaxies though.) 

But now we’re apparently being presented with something that isn’t fit for purpose nor befitting the prestige it deserves.

People joke about it being made in Microsoft Paint but the crest we’re seeing, if real, is fundamentally unprofessional - cobbled together with elements from the last two efforts within a new crest shape. Arranged awkwardly and trying to solve the colour issue with a chunky drop shadow. If it’s a cost cutting exercise, there’s a good chance it was done in-house or by a cheaper-option contact, as has been suggested. (That’s not a slur on any design resource at the club, I don’t know them, their level, nor their brief; nor indeed if this is what’s happened. Nor do I know Mr.Heck, who has presumably directed and approved the alleged result. Just speculating due to the below-par execution.)

All I can say is if what we’re seeing is true, it’s frustratingly not good enough. 

Despite my preference to not have a round badge, I’d take it all day long over what we’re apparently getting. It’ll be very interesting to see if there’s a wider set of assets released alongside the alleged new crest, such as the font and any other bits from this year’s agency effort. It may slightly rescue things.

I’ve always thought the best way to do these very challenging projects is to allow a good agency to run the process, of gleaning a decent amount of fan feedback and insight to develop a solution. But from being involved in this forum, I think there’s a clear case for designer fans with the knowledge, insight and talent to collaborate on such things (as has been suggested). There are clearly people on here (doing some lovely things purely as a passion project. How cost-friendly is that?! Bound to be the same at other clubs.

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AAANNNND ANOTHER THING - apart from the overall quality of design, something that really grinds my gears is that with a brand refresh coming at the same time as the 150 year anniversary, it was an opportunity to incorporate it in a new visual identity, then proudly move forward with our shiny new look. Yes the 150 is a temporary one-off, but the fact that it seemingly has no correlation whatsoever with the badge stylistically feels wrong (aside from it also being fairly illegible). 

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I had high hopes for Mr.Heck and have to admit I was glad things were going back to the drawing board - but again, that’s personal opinion about the brand, and a separate conversation. There was a coincidental crossover of people at the helm (Purslow-Heck), and I wanted to trust that we had someone who’d steer it in a more innovative, ownable direction whilst respecting fans and history, as much as it wasn’t a great look to change course. On the evidence so far, this is not the case. 

I hate being negative and don’t want to sound preachy, but it’s born out of passion and therefore frustrating. It’s mostly opinions, but they come from a decent amount of knowledge and experience. Our identity is for us to own and love, and how we present ourselves to the world. Any re-brand, re-fresh, logo change or whatever, at least needs a sound reason as well as being well executed. Not everyone will love the outcome, but at least have those. Where we allegedly are would seem to cancel any reason because it now looks like change for change’s sake, as well as being poorly made.

So despite the messy process it has been, I’d rather go again and achieve something befitting of our great club. Right now it’s either have something crap which was the result of a less than ideal process, and will be largely disliked moving forward (on the evidence I’ve seen) and probably result in having to do it again sooner rather than later; vs. have something that the majority think looks great and lasts for decades, with the crap process becoming a historical footnote.

(Or simply leave it at what you invested in last year.)

Full judgement reserved until when things are officially released. This may well have been another pointless outburst. But on the off-chance the club are reading through this stuff - please let us help you fix it. The reactions are because this really matters.

Hey we played a game of football today didn’t we?  

As a fellow designer, this post does a really good job of expressing pretty much how I feel about the wider situation and the detailed design of the new Trademarked crest. 

Someone also made a great point about the cost saving benefits of this remixed version using the existing lion (that is already plastered all over the ground and printed on promotional assets and merchandise stock), which is most likely the driving force behind it. Though of course this won't be the reason expressed to the fans. The decision is based on a short term gain (or minimised loss) rather than long term benefit.

As stated in the middle of the quoted Post, this whole process should have been an opportunity to sort out the visual identity of the Club, not just the crest. The current visual identity is almost non-existent and totally muddled at best. I makes us look small time and amateurish.

We should be entrusting a top agency to do something like this:

https://www.dixonbaxi.com/work/acmilanbrand

https://thisaway.co/work/forward-thinking-football

https://someoneinlondon.com/projects/the-pack-is-back

https://www.nssmag.com/en/sports/30484/venezia-logo-borsche-bureau

https://im.inter.it/en/?utm_source=news&utm_medium=en&utm_campaign=IM

It's interesting to re-watch the video that Dragon Rouge made for the 2 crest options, including the reasoning behind the design decisions (https://www.dragonrouge.com/news/why-our-aston-villa-crest-redesign-is-great-for-all-football-fans-eng/), and hinting at how they could be rolled out. 

The proposed / leaked crest looks like a bit of a mess. Others have mentioned it but it's like there was an Apprentice task to rebrand Villa in an afternoon. It recycles existing assets (lion, star and colour  scheme from the 'old' badge, together with the Font from the rejected Gaslamp crest), adds 1874 in a default neutral font, and places them within a new shield that has been engineered to not look like too much like the current one, or those of other teams.

I think people found the 'Gaslamp' Crest a bit underwhelming, and fans have a real attachment to the old round crest for obvious reasons, so it was never going to win the vote, but it's a solidly designed crest, that resolves a most of the issues with the the AVFC shield. It has a strong distinctive shape, with a nice rationale/story, a good fierce looking lion, nice bespoke typography, decent contrast, and a sense of horizontal and vertical balance. I'd delete the star though if I was to tweak it.

Personally, I'd like something very unique with wow factor like the Juventus J Shield or Venezia's bold V, but the 'Gaslamp' is an acceptable middle ground if the Club feels that it can't stray too far from the norm.

This new leaked 'proposed' shield design, while adding 'Aston Villa', seems to create more problems than it resolves. The vertical balance is off; the small size of the 1874 and its position between the text and lion creates awkward space in the lower centre of the badge; the drop shadow attempting to create some depth and contrast, looks awkward, cheap and dare I say it lazy (Chelsea's badge - we love this comparison! - uses a drop shadow, but in a much more subtle way and the shadow is applied to the dark blue lion on a white background, so it does not stick out like a sore thumb); the double shield outline (forming a triple outline when coloured) adds visual clutter and busyness to the crest, draws the eye away from the main elements; the shape feels over-designed in order to create something that is slightly different from the existing version, and other major British Club shields (Arsenal, Burnley, Everton, Fulham, West Ham, Newcastle, Leeds etc, together with the insert shield in City and United); the text alignment clashes with the point of the shield; 1874 in Helvetica seems like an afterthought; the lion lacks detail and texture, looking flat and low impact.

Ultimately, to undertake yet another re-design in such a short period was never going to work out well. If they wanted to do it they should have taken a year, and launched post-the 150 anniversary. Instead, it looks like it's been fudged in-house with predictable results.

1 minute ago, GarethRDR said:

I totally get that from a functional perspective, but our name really should be at the top as it's possibly the most stand-out thing about us.

Yeah, it's a question of vertical balance. The lion looks like it is standing on one foot precariously balancing on the 1874. Achieving a harmonious balance in a design is tricky. If you look at other premier league badges (including the current AVFC shield), most achieve this reasonably well. Spurs and Palace have birds perching on a ball with text under, but it looks natural

The small size of the 1874 and its position between the text and lion also creates awkward space in the lower centre of the badge. This is made much worse when coloured and scaled down (i.e. on most mobile apps) since you loose the white 1874 within an expanse of sky blue. This is a similar problem to the yellow lion on sky blue that has been an issue for years with the flat version of the badge. 

Ticks a lot of boxes 

Not sure if this has been shared on here. Daniel Norris' retro badge remakes. 

23 hours ago, MrBlack said:

Is he implying that being a bigger fish in a smaller pond meant that they had more power to get Adidas to agree to do a bit of custom work for them?

I think, the power dynamic with the shirt sponsors is different to that with the manufacturer. The third party designer says in the podcast, that Adidas gave them strict parameters to work with (e.g this core template, these collar options, shirt base colour, plus 2 accent colours), they then had to work creatively within that. It just so happened the designer was a Leeds fan, so they went to town on the research/development and managed to find a way of maximising what they could do with those elements, which I think the fans have been overwhelmingly happy with. 

I'd imagine Leeds, Fulham and Leicester are on a similar contracts with Adidas, far below Arsenal, Man U, Juve, and Bayern, but you can see the difference with what they have managed to come up with when compared to Fulham and Leicester. 

I'm fascinated what Villa's attitude is to all this, and what briefs they are giving to the designers.  Whether there is any long/medium term strategy on the kits? For example, I'd like to see us go traditional with the home shirt for 2 or 3 years, then every 4th year, bring back stripes or do something different that is still identifiable as a Villa kit. When was the last time we had stripes on the home shirt, 1999/2000? Also, the yellow, 'Brazil style' away kit for 93 is a bit of classic, but they have never gone back to that yellow, blue and claret colour scheme as far as I can remember.

23 hours ago, MrBlack said:

Is he implying that being a bigger fish in a smaller pond meant that they had more power to get Adidas to agree to do a bit of custom work for them?

To clarify, the point is that the more the front of shirt sponsors and sleeve sponsors pay, the less likely they are to agree to having their logos in the Club Colour scheme, particularly on the home shirt which will be most visible through the season. 

So, I'd hope someone at Villa asked 'BK8' and our sleeve sponsor whether we could have the logos in white during the contract stage, but they obviously ended up with the white and orange logos, which will massively detract from any claret and blue home shirt in my opinion. Makes it look more cluttered. 

It's one of the reasons why the podcast is interesting, because it reveals that there's certain things that are beyond club control, or extremely difficult to negotiate, that the designers just have to take on the chin.

With the rumours that we might be ending the Castore deal early and switching manufacturer, I've seen Adidas brought up a lot.

There's some concern that we would not be an one of their 'elite' level clubs and therefore get the basic template stuff like Leicester and Leeds etc do.

But, it seems like even in this scenario, there's interesting bespoke things that can be done above just sticking the club badge on a template kit.

I just finished listening to a Podcast (The Square Ball - Leeds fan podcast, but very well done), that explains in a decent amount of detail the process between the designer (Acid FC),  Manufacturer (Adidas), Club, and sponsors. The designer does admit, that one of the knock on impacts of relegation, meant that they had enough sway with the sponsors to get all the colours properly matched up to the blue on the home shirt, which probably wouldn't have happened in the Prem (see our orange BK8 monstrosity). 

It would be interesting to see what Adidas could do for us, if they partnered up with a kit designer who was a Villa fan . 

Would highly recommend the four episodes on the kit. The first is linked below. 

18 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

I see what you mean by simple, and I don't disagree with that, but I think we need more than just a Lion.

I just scanned the PL and football league crests and (arguably, some are a bit wonky) 13 teams had a Lion included in some capacity. Of course there are nuances about how they are displayed, but my point is that when someone says 'that team, you know the one with the cockerel standing on a ball', you think Tottenham, because... well, unique. When someone says 'that team with the Lion', they are not going to necessarily think of us. In fact they are, according to most of the sources I've just googled, more likely to think of Chelsea. We'd know, obviously, but the crest is supposed to be a symbol that encapsulates us, and projects our singular image. 

No one else has the golden arches. Let's be unique. And not shit, obviously. 

I did the same exercise. Chelsea, Middlesbrough, Burnley, Glasgow Rangers, are the main ones I think of.

1860 Munich and Lyon also have prominent Lions.

Then there's the Premier League Logo on the sleeve patch, Holland, Scotland, England, Czech Republic National Teams. 

4 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Yeah, this. The Lion on its own or the appearance of "Prepared" or "1874" in some places, different types of badge based around the themes we use - a language of images that can be combined in different ways.

I just finished filling out the form and suggested they look at a 'modular' system, which would allow elements to be bolted onto a Crest for some applications, but stripped away from it for the the main uses (Playing Kit and Digital Logos). 

The European Champions Star could be placed above the Crest only when we compete in Europe, and 'Prepared' and/or '1874' can be attached in certain circumstances. 

But the main element should be simple, bold and unique enough to stand alone. 

I really like these 'diamond' shaped badge ideas.

It makes so much sense with the A V shapes, and there's not many around that I can think of (Fiorentina, Wolfsburg, Borussia M'gladback?), so helps to stand out from the crowd.

It also evokes Victorian tiled patterns, and I think there's some similar shapes in the Holte End stained glass, and the old mural facing the pitch at the top of the old Trinity Road stand.

https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/photos/item/PLA01/08/0004

I'd be tempted to go even more bold, bulkier and abstract with the concept, take the cross bar of the 'A', and perhaps make the angles 90 degrees (a perfect square rotated 45 degrees), since that would better suit expansion into wider checkerboard patterns as part of a wider visual identity for the Club). 

You would probably need to redesign a lion that fills/responds to that space nicely.

West Ham have done sponsorless shirts for adults for a few years https://www.officialwesthamstore.com/kits/home-kit-202223/adults/

Feels a bit sad to me that we will likely have a sponsor like this going into the 150th anniversary of the Club. 

Interesting to see that Venezia have just ditched their round crest including a lion, to something much more abstract built around a 'V'.

I imagine this is a bit marmite, but personally I love it. Looks great in Gold on the shirt.

https://www.nssmag.com/en/sports/30278/venezia-changed-logo

I was thinking the same thing about the third kit, then wondered the same thing about last years and the year before. How many league games have we won in those three 3rd kits since promotion!?

I'm sure the new kits will look a lot better when they are modelled by the players and professionally photographed, but can't help but be very disappointed by these.

The home is fine, but I don't see any real bespoke details or any any design elements that derive from the identity of the Club. This is something that Kappa seemed to work really hard on. The loss of the textured badge is also really sad. Is this a cost cutting thing I wonder?

I also feel Kappa struck a really nice balance between tradition for the older fans and more daring designs that younger fans could wear as 'streetwear'. The third is a stab at that I suppose, but it seems to be a generic pattern and colour choices. As a set, it all just looks really bland to me. 

Good old Cazoo though, at least they let us change the colour of their logo to suit the kits.

They feel like kits from 5-10 years ago to me. Major step backwards. 

This is a really interesting question, since every fan tends to come at it from a different perspective, like how it looks flat on a website, what it looks like on the kit, what it looks like in comparison to earlier versions etc. People also have emotional attachments to particular version, which is totally valid. 

I think Norwich have done a fantastic job of their crest update. The website gives great detail on the reasons why they adjusted the individual elements and the colours. It also seems to have involved a lot of consultation with fans and groups. I took a quick look at the twitter replies to their announcement and there were a lot just saying ‘this is disgusting’ etc but the only reason given seemed to be that it just wasn’t the old version. 

I also think that the Juventus ‘J’ is great. ‘J’ is a very unusual letter in Italian/hardly used, so the club thought it was a unique element to build the crest around, together with the iconic black and white stripes, which are cleverly worked in with the J. 

I’m 50/50 on our current crest. I think it looks poor as a flat version both digitally and printed on signage. This is mostly due to the colour though, the tone of the yellow and blue seems to wash together, there’s not quite enough contrast so it always looks much better in one colour. When it is put on a kit, they use the more detailed textured version of the lion and it looks absolutely stunning. Pretty much the best out there as far as I’ve seen. 

I don’t really have an issue with the AVFC, although Aston Villa is such a unique name, there’s an argument that it should be included. 

I do have an issue with the star. In a strange way I think that it’s small-time, and sure you could fit maybe one more star on the right-hand side of the lion’s head, but there’s no room for 3 or 4 extra stars. How is that for future proofing(!) I think it should sit above the crest and maybe only during seasons when we play in Europe. 

Finally, on the shape, there’s a huge trend of modernising to a round crest that’s been going for 5-10 years. Man City’s seems to be the template for a lot of these and I’d like to see the club go for something that is unique to Villa (AC Milan have used their oval very well throughout their club identity). I have always though that the ‘A’ and ‘V’ would come together nicely as a diamond shape, and that the crest shape could be built around this. I can’t think of many other diamond shape crests in world football (Borussia Monchengladback have one and Spartak Moscow have a horizontal version).  

The other way to go would be to have a lion on the crest and nothing else. I think the Dutch national team crest is a stunning version of this approach (aside from very small ‘KNVB’ text at the top). Their lion just pops due to the extra detail in the outline and the dark/light contrast.