Why Are Football Logos Becoming So Boring?

football Badges and logos are changing in interesting ways and when I say interesting what I mean of course is incredibly boring either consciously or subconsciously you've probably already noticed this yourselves a lot of clubs at all levels of the game have had rebrands during the 21st century and a lot of these rebrands seem to have an awful lot in common a suspicious amount in fact Manchester City who had taken over by the Abu Dhabi United group in 2008 adopted a new badge in 2016 as part of a broader rebranding exercise which included the launch of a new website this was the Citizen's previous badge from 1997 to 2016 and this is the badge or logo that replaced it gone was the eagle which was meant to represent Manchester's Aerospace industry gone to were the three purely decorative Stars which didn't symbolize any titles or trophies and the club's motto superbia impro Leo which is Latin for pride in battle was also acted in favor of the streamlined new design Championship side Bristol City's badge from 1994 to 2019 albeit it did get a minor facelift in 2015 is what one might describe as being a classic English football badge based very closely on the city of Bristol's coat of arms just like the club's first ever badge from 1901 it featured a ship sailing away from the Watergate of Bristol Castle scales which represent Justice and two unicorns which according to Legend would only pay homage to Men of virtue the new logo by contrast is uh round features only three colors and the stencl iconography of a robin or how about YoVille Town one of English football's most recent rebrands who earlier this month announced that they will be ditching their current badge at the end of this season an amusingly terrible but nonetheless iconic and interes design again based upon the town Zone coat of arms and replacing it with this which looks like a stock image and could belong to any club in World football we're not for the words yelt toown FC being emblazened upon it in a nondescript font it's not just English clubs though Italian Giants Juventus and interlan have rebranded to simplify designs in recent years along with fantina and halis Verona nons have replaced their old Crest which featured lots of I ography with well just a big n in League gun and in Major League Soccer a league which is quite frankly obsessed with the rebrands Chicago Fire ditched their old logo for this monstrosity in 2019 before rebranding again in 2021 meanwhile Columbus Crew went through four different logos in the space of just seven years going from one of the strangest and most iconic badges in World football to yet another tricolor round aler with a few adjustments namely the colors and the word printed on it could also belong to just about any club in World football nor is it even just clubs Spain recently simplified their national team logo going from this to this and going from seven different colors down to two and removing much of the detail in the process Mexico have also minimalized their national team badge as have Belgium Australia Sweden Ecuador Costa Rica Iceland Kosovo gibralta Paraguay Bahrain Thailand and even San Marino even leagues have got in on the ACT the Premier League rebranded from this to this in 2016 La Liga recently went from this to this and World Cup logos have gone from looking like this to this admittedly the UEFA Champions League logo hasn't changed all that much in fact anyone who can tell the difference between the three logos from 1995 to 2021 only at a glance deserves a medal some rebrands have gone down so badly that clubs have been forced into u-turns you may recall this absolute belter from Everton which was so despised that it had to be dropped after just a single season Hall City's 2014 Rebrand which was an exercise in spite as the club's then owners removed any trace of the club's actual name as they tried and failed to change it to H Tigers was also unsurprisingly shortlived and this horror show from Leeds United in 2018 which apparently came out of 6 months of research 10,000 people being consulted presumably none of them leads United fans and most of them supporters of rival clubs and was apparently ready for the next 100 years but didn't even end up lasting 10 days due to the backlash from fans so just what on Earth is going on then why are so many football clubs national teams and indeed competitions rebranding why do those rebrands all look the same and why as a result is football's iconography becoming so soulless tedious and downright saish well that's what today's video is all about so sit back relax and join me on a journey from Melbourne to BAU as we take a look at the evolution of football badges the death of detail and the recent wave of ubiquitous tedium that has washed over the sports motifs like a tsunami of raw sewage what what is a football batch well it's a logo that represents a team and goes on the front of their shirts that makes seem like the easiest answer but not only is it grossly incomplete especially in the modern era it's not even necessarily accurate in its incomplete form for a start football badges go on a lot more than the front of match and replica shirts these days you will find them on a raft of merchandise athleisure Fashion Wear accessories online in marketing and and all around a stadium the multiple use cases for badges or logos now compared to when they were first designed and even only 20 or 30 years ago has completely transformed their purpose meaning and design once upon a time when a badge was just something to be embroidered onto a bunch of Match Day shirts to be worn by players the remit for the bad's design was extremely narrow and its importance even only symbolically was pretty limited throughout the first century organized football you didn't really see a club's badge so wasn't something that most fans preoccupied themselves caring much about during the first half of the 20th century and even into the 1960s and70s it was rare to find a club's badge even on the front of their own Match Day program one of the few forms of Club specific media which existed at the time that's not to say that there was no iconography at all it just didn't tend to be the club or their opposition's badge here is a Manchester United program from the 1950s for example as you can see no Manchester United badge from that era which looked like this here is the program for the 1961 European Cup Final between Barcelona and Benfica again featuring neither of the club's Badges and just in case you still didn't believe me here is a Liverpool program from when they hosted Ajax in the European Cup in December 1966 which again doesn't feature anything that even remotely resembl the Liverpool or Ajax badges at the time this was the case it is worth bearing in mind for the majority of the history of football these were simpler times and most clubs as in the case of the recently replaced Bristol City and YoVille toown badges that I displayed during the introduction simply adopted the coat of arms of their home cities towns or Villages this includes some of the biggest clubs in the world FC Barcelona's first badge for example looked like this making it an almost direct replica of the city council of Barcelona's coat of arms Liverpool's first badge adopted in 1892 had an almost direct resemblance to the Liverpool city council coat of arms the Manchester City Council coat of arms was reflected both in Manchester United's badge from 1902 to 1940 and in various Manchester City badges all the way up to 1978 and the Atletico Madrid badge still to this day features the same Motif namely the bear and the tree as one will'll find on the coat of arms of Madrid which dates all the way back to the Middle Ages as football clubs began to forge their own independent identities and their badges began to become more prominent and take on new meaning we saw a huge Divergence and diversity of designs though often inspired by the prevailing Art and Design trends of the era so badges at the start of the 20th century were often influenced by the artnau movements followed by the rise of the art deco visual style which emanated out of Paris influencing the logos of the likes of Arsenal Bayern Munich and RA Madrid during this era and then came the international typographic style which was particularly prevalent in Europe and represented a much more radical wave of rebrands and redesigns out went a lot of the local coat of arms and Latin motos associated with many club's badges since their Inception and Inc came much more modern designs stripping away a lot of the artnau intricacies and often replacing them with a single symbol or image as Roma ditched their traditional logo of a wolf which on their current badge I always thought looked more like an elephant with its young suckling on its teeths along with text and a shield and replaced it simply with the stylized head of a wolf sheville Wednesday dumped their old badge which is also their current badge which is relatively intricate and detailed and replaced it with a stripped back and Ultra simp listic drawing of an owl without a shield or crest of any description and a lot of clubs including my own retain the iconography of the old badge in Hall City's case a bizarre yet brilliant interpretation of what a tiger looks like but removed everything other than the animal or symbol itself even more common as in the case of Chelsea Everton and again my own club Hall city was the strategy of basically doing away with a logo or badge alog together or at least making any to design one and instead just embroidering your club's initials onto the front of your shirts I have given a handful of examples here but I could go on for days as almost every Club underwent a major Rebrand during this era among the most interesting or at least reflective of the broader Trends in design and subsequently football at the time was leads United's two shli badges between 1973 and 1977 having initially gone down the same route as everyone else of just printing their initials on the front of their shirt at the beginning of the 1970s and what can only be described as having a sheffel Wednesday badge before that Leeds adopted a badge that came to be known as the smiley the badge makes out the letters l and you though only just and if you didn't know the club's name you would be unlikely to clock it which is perhaps why from 1977 to 1980 the smiley was amended to feature a round Shield which also included the club name in a more easyto read font the smiley was typical of the 70s revolution of Badges and the disregard for tradition and sentimentality that came with it with a hyper Focus On Athletics personally I love a lot of the football logos from this era that seem to epitomize what we might now term a retro athetic though specifically just in the case of leed's smiley logo as soon as someone points out the bell end you never really unsee it I'm afraid it was ruin for me and now it has been for you as well all right let's move on following the era of abstract badges there was an almost equally rapid return to tradition during the 1990s many clubs returned to something resembling some of their earliest badges just using the same examples from earlier on as Roma reverted to type bringing back the suckling tee wolves their initials and an emblem Sheffield Wednesday went back to something very similar to their badge from the 1950s and 60s Everton basically went back to their old badge from the 1930s through to 1972 and Hall City well look to be quite Frank with you I'd really rather not talk about it we all make mistakes all right and that is where we were at the beginning of the 2000s with a lot of traditional if slightly more polished badges often featuring lots of symbolism intricate decorative and ornamental details and several different colors it is perhaps going going from that era of facelifted traditionalism rather than the more abstract logos of the ' 80s and '90s that makes today's minimalism seems so shocking and soulless to a lot of people and while it is a new design Revolution that has been brought about in part by a change of function the purpose of football logos has shifted radically in recent years as with Trends throughout the last 150 years it didn't happen in isolation football logos tend to follow Trends rather than set them and that is especially true of the current raft of rebrands football clubs and certainly the top clubs who seek to Market themselves globally rather than locally regionally or even only nationally these days now view themselves as Brands just as much as they are clubs if not more so in some instances yes Ed Woodward and the glazers I am looking at you but Manchester United are not the freak outliers or priers you may think or that they are sometimes portrayed as being as footb football has become more corporate and commercialized at an Ever accelerating speed we shouldn't be all that surprised to see logos and imagery which reflect that fact the shift towards ever more minimalist and instantly recognizable branding has taken the world of design at the corporate level at least by storm in recent years when you think about it the rebranding of Burger King and brenford K and Verona or Warner Brothers and Seattle Sounders really aren't all that different in all instances the brands involved have stripped back detailing simplified the core design or implemented entirely new simplified icon and reduce the number of colors in all six instances the motive or logic is also the same they want simpler and more instantly recognizable iconography to strengthen their marketing and branding it's just that people tend to have much more attachment to their football clubs and the imagery that is associated with them than they do to Burger King or ke so when they Rebrand there is a lot more emotional investments in It ultimately though much as we may wish or believe that football is different to McDonald's or Sony in the eyes of those who own the sport it really isn't that's probably one of the reasons why German Football in the Bundesliga where the 50 plus1 rule ensures that with only two exceptions fans still have a great deal more Authority when it comes to how their clubs are run and the corporate decisions they take than clubs in England Italy or France for example full has seen far fewer rebrands in recent years and practically none which follow the exact same blueprint that has infected every country in League where private and state ownership Reigns Supreme Bayern Munich basically still have the same badge that they had in the 1960s barusa dortmund's badge has barely changed since 1919 and even by lusen one of the bundesliga's 2 50 plus1 rule exempt clubs have hardly changed their badge in almost 30 years now now likewise fellow nominally or meaningfully fan-owned clubs throughout the world have also tended to retain a stronger sense of their identities and that is reflected in their logos whether that be rapid Vienna in Austria Real Madrid and Barcelona in La Liga or most of the leading clubs still in Argentina and Brazil orbe it that is starting to shift now with the latter since new rules were passed to encourage foreign investment for those outside of Germany and other fan-owned clubs though the March towards dull uniformity has been incessant in many ways arsenal were the first club to go down this route in 2002 fresh off the back of winning a Premier League at FA Cup double Arsenal ditched their decorative Crest which they had had in some form since 1949 and replaced it with something radically different out went the ornamental detailing black letter typography and the coat of arms of the Metropolitan burrow of Islington meanwhile the famous Arsenal can was switched from Facing East to West to pointing from west to east the latter was actually due to a copyright issue another frequent issue relating to badge design which can prompt rebrands along with the symbolism of entering a new era rebrands are particularly common at clubs within the first few years of an ownership change as new regimes Implement their ideas of how the club should be marketed and look to distinguish themselves from that which came before them in Arsenal's case having had a relatively unchanged badge more than 50 years the Rebrand was time to coincide with the Premier League's explosion in worldwide popularity the broader modernization brought about at the club by arson benger and in anticipation of moving to the state-of-the-art Emirates Stadium in 2006 which was already under construction there was another motive though according to Dave Harrison who worked for insign badges at the time Howard Wilkinson who also designed lead United's new badge in 1998 had a very clear idea in his mind of the type of branding that he wanted to create speaking to the athletic in 2022 Harrison stated quote he wanted something that was more of a logo something more easily identifiable he said to me the cannon is Arsenal The Tick is Nik that's what he was thinking he wanted something that jumped out instantly end quote it is in that sense more so than the copyright issue or New Era symbolism that Arsenal set the tone for what was to come the Nik tick evoked by Wilkinson is among the most instantly recognizable brands in the world but all sportsware brands have tried to create extremely slick refined and distinctive logos over the years whether that be added ass whose three stripes feature on virtually every single one of their products Puma whose logo requires little explanation Reebok Umbro Castor feler kapper under arour New Balance and of course my personal favorite lacox sportif the same is true of the most iconic and instantly recognizable Brands outside of sports whether that be apple cocacola McDonald's Google Facebook Instagram mercedesbenz Ford Volkswagen Rolex MasterCard dominoes Amazon heck even the website or app that you're watching this on YouTube one of the most interesting examples when put side by side with the revolution in football branding is Starbucks who were founded in 1971 with a very detailed drawing of a siren not a mermaid to be clear who only have one tale while Sirens tends to have two and if there is absolutely nothing else that you take from this video then at least let it be that but have through three different iterations simplified their logo up to their current design created in 2011 which has no text no borders next to no detail and only two colors is that really any different a legal on side Derby County who just one year after Starbucks in 2012 and I'm not suggesting that the two are directly related also did away with the text border and detailing of their former badge while retaining the same Central Motif and if you compare it to their former badge up to 2009 also reduce the number of colors present from 3 to 2 technically speaking there are no colors in the derby Rebrand and only one in the Starbucks one because black and white are colors of course their Shades but you get what I mean I mention that only because I know that there would be that one guy rushing to make that point and correct me down below in the comments and I refuse to give him that satisfaction not today Tariq better luck next time when you think of Nike Adidas and Puma being the model most football club rebrands even when unpopular with supporters themselves become much easier to understand a leure has absolutely exploded in recent years becoming the fastest growing category in fashion and football clubs are looking to cash in whereas replica shirts used to be almost the sole Cash Cow for clubs along with the occasional training top here in there perhaps now you do well to find an item of clothing that hasn't been emblazened with your club's logo on it in your Club shop clubs therefore are no longer designing logos with the soul or even necessarily the principal consideration of how it to look on the front of a football shirt but on hats trainers hoodies tracksuits sweatshirts water bottles and just about anything else that you can think of when it comes to branding and marketing in sports essentially everyone wants to be the New York Yankees whose Insignia is probably the most recognizable in World sport despite baseball enjoying only a tiny fraction of football's popularity and many people who wear Yankees and blaz and baseball caps or other items of clothing having little to no interest in the Yankees themselves probably the best example of a football club trying to replicate the Yankees is Italian giant Juventus in 2017 Juventus underwent a very expensive and high-profile Rebrand ditching a logo that had been synonymous with the club for over a hundred years in favor of something completely different unlike with a lot of modern rebrands which are accused of being either boring or soulless or both of the above like Manchester City or halis Verona juventus's Rebrand didn't take inspiration from any former Juventus badges never before had Juventus been represented simply by the letter J and in fact even during the abstract and psychedelic rebranding era of the 1970s and 80s never before had juventus's badge not featured a zebra of some description so closely associated with the club's colors and one of their nicknames and never before have the club's badge not featured the word Juventus it itself most Juventus fans and football fans more broadly given the fact that Juventus is such an iconic Club hated the 2017 and updated 2020 rebrands and yet marketing gurus designers and brand strategists Ador it at the same time that Juventus fans were calling for the club's old badge to be reinstated the new logo was winning awards at branding and design conferences it spoke of the disconnect between what fans want which is typically some kind kind of imagery or symbolism that means something to them and that speaks to the club's Heritage and tradition and what Marketing Executives and brand Consultants want which is something simple minimalist and instantly recognizable the end result is the Erasure of color the removal of text flat and distinct colors being favored ahead of gradients fewer Shadows or 3D effects and zero tolerance for anything floral ornamental or decorative often with a want and disregard card for Nostalgia or meaning football club badges used to mean something they were packs full of symbolism and nods to the club Zone pasted some still are the Liverpool badge for example features the famous shankley Gates outside of amfi flames which symbolize remembrance for fans killed in the hillsbor disaster the club's full name year of establishment and a Lia bird within a shield except of course that while that is still officially the Liverpool badge you won't find any of that on the front of the Liverpool shirt or in almost any Liverpool merchandise not now and not at any stage for the last 10 plus years since 2012 Liverpool just like the New York Yankees have had an official team badge or logo which is this and then their own separate Insignia which looks like this the New York Yankees official team logo likewise looks like this a little bit less recognizable than the Insignia that's actually displayed on their uniforms iconic caps and other merchandise to be honest I'm surprised that this isn't a route that more clubs have gone down a sort of rebranding by stealth which would allow for more marketable Insignia on branded products up to and even including replica shirts without doing away with a logo that might have a lot of emotional attachment to supporters I see no reason for instance why eventus couldn't have retained their old logo or something very similar as their official team logo whilst using the minimalist new J design on most of their branded products that includes of course must have items like Juventus Adidas gazel Juventus bucket hats and literal ice buckets and who could forget the unmissable Juventus gamini Cactus which was recently reduced from €2 279 down to an absolute Bargain Basement price of only €199 99 I just of course but Juventus 's commercial Revenue has more than doubled since their 2017 Rebrand meanwhile Match Day Revenue has also increased despite Juventus going from being serial Seria title winners in Champions League finalists to finishing seventh last season and failing to even qualify for Europe that is why though juventus's Rebrand may have been unpopular with supporters it hasn't deterred other owners chairman and Executives from going down a similar route for some clubs they are able to have their can eat it PSG for example are among the most marketable brands in World football and the qataris haven't had to Rebrand the club's logo at the risk of potentially upsetting supporters in the process in order to create simple and instantly recognizable branding which can seamlessly be integrated onto almost any product the PSG badge features the iconic symbolism of the Eiffel Tower which is Paris France and possibly even Europe's Most instantly recognizable landmark Mark the club has a massive and highly successful fashion and a leure range and a unique partnership with Nike allowing them to use the N Jordan branding on their shirts and merchandise sometimes replacing the Eiffel Tower on their badge with the famous Jordan Watermark the end result is a global brand with super stores in New York LA Tokyo Seoul Miami Vegas and even London which I find quite frankly remarkable but hey it's 2024 Alig get with the times and merchandise sales that make a tangible impact upon the day-to-day operations of one of the richest and highest spending clubs in World football less successful it would be fair to say was the attempted 2020 Rebrand of fellow French outfit bordeau by the club's new American owners who in their Eternal wisdom changed the club's logo removing the word duh presumably on the assumption that it didn't really matter all that much so that bordo's new logo no longer displayed their name or even made grammatical sense in French great work General American Capital Partners you absolutely nailed it following the trend of club's rebranding to Herald the dawn of a new era West Ham changed their badge from this to this in 2016 when the club moved from Upton park into the London Stadium the Hammers went down the very well trodden path by this stage of minimalism and creating a more template and simplistic Shield but whilst others have stripped way text West Ham actually added the word London to their batch despite the fact that it isn't in their name has never been in their name and has never previously featured on their batch it would appear to be a pretty Brazen attempt in addition to moving into the London Stadium that was once the Olympic Stadium to Market West Ham as the quintessential London club and to capitalize both upon London being one of the world's best known and most visited cities and the fact that almost unique among football loving super cities there isn't a single professional football club with the word London in their name if you think of Paris New York Los Angeles Madrid Moscow sou Paulo or Milan that makes London relatively unusual though I'm not sure how much success West Ham have had in entrenching themselves as the London Club ahead of Arsenal Spurs or Chelsea or how one would even gauge the success of such an attempt to be entirely honest personally I think that the Old West Ham badge was infinitely better than the current one but I suspect that I'm not the Target demographic it's not just branding on merchandise that clubs need to think about when it comes to their logos anymore though increasingly it is how they will exist within an online sphere whereas once you wouldn't even find a club's badge inside of their own Match Day program now they're everywhere they are on league tables Google searches video games news websites and on social media there are even sometimes in YouTube thumbnails one of the reasons it has been posited why so many clubs have adopted round logos in recent years rather than more complex shapes or Shields or traditional crests is because they make for much easier avatars and profile pictures for their social media accounts meanwhile the fondness for by Chrome designs or at least significantly reducing the number of colors present in a logo is because it makes them much more adaptable particularly for online use I am familiar with this problem myself just from designing my own thumbnails sometimes a logo just won't sit right on a certain background typically due to the not being enough contrast between the two colors almost all clubs now however have either black and white or color inverted logos the Spurs badge for example can come in black white or blue the Juventus badge is just as recognizable in either black or white and Liverpool's Insignia unlike the actual badge is incredibly flexible and adaptable depending on its purpose at any given moment there's also the more mundane motivation though it is very much a secondary or tertiary one the simple logos with fewer colors and less intricate patterns and outlines can be cheaper for manufacturers to mass produce on hundreds of different pieces of merchandise keeping cost down and increasing profit margins I could swear that I once read a report on manufacturers leaning on clubs to alter their badges or at least create more template insignia for their kits like Liverpool for this exact reason though I have been unable to find said article for this video and after Consulting clothing designers and Executives I am told that the added cost at least for big clubs is likely to be negligible these days it is important to note as I have alluded to a few times throughout this video that though the very corporate and Slick logos that we have seen arise in over recent years might seem soulless and boring many of them though not juventus's or Bristol cities for example are based upon old designs either from the pre-war or abstract eras so Manchester City's post 20106 logo is very similar to their badge between 1972 and 1997 burnley's new badge is well it's literally their old badge just by chromed and even Aston Villa's controversial recent Rebrand is basically just a modern interpretation of the club's logo between 1973 and 1990 in isolation there isn't anything necessarily wrong with any of them nor are they especially tedious or soulless in of themselves it is the uniformity of it all the sameish of it every Club having effectively the same exact rebranding exercise that leaves a sour taste in the mouth the best example of this in my view is the logos of the various clubs owned by the City football group the world's largest richest and most powerful multiclub ownership model each of these logos in isolation may be fine but knowing as we do that they are all owned effectively by the United Arab Emirates and they're all just cogs in a hyper corporate machine somehow they become emblematic ironically of a deeper sickness in football and the slow death of an authenticity and resonance that the sport once had in spad these things are all cyclical we saw that with a history of badges from the 1800s through to the late 1990s and as Trends and broader movements in fashion design and in business shift outside of football the sport will naturally follow suit that has always been the case but the purpose of logos their use cases and the people who own the game have all changed with inevitable consequences that have perhaps Only Just Begun that is it for today's video but thanks thank you all very much as ever for watching hit the like button if you enjoyed it let me know your thoughts Down Below in the comments and of course goes without was saying make sure that you are subscribed and have notifications turned on for both this Channel hitc 7s and also my second Channel Alfie Poots armor both of which should be about to appear on your screens now along with a couple of videos that you might fancy watching after this one you can also find me on Twitter Instagram or threads via the username @ hc7 on all three should you wish to do so and uh all of those links plus a whole lot more should be down in the video description below cheers

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 295,473

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, Badges, Logos, Boring, Premier League, Soulless, Manchester City, Inter Milan, Bristol City, Serie A, Champions League, Icons, Liverpool, Documentary, MLS, Major League Soccer, Rebrands, Man City

Id: xMJHhtGTdtY

Length: 34min 34sec (2074 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024