Football Re-brands

Uniquim

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Didn't see a thread about this, but a lot of football clubs have been re-branding. There's the trend of clubs like Juve, and more recently Spurs rebranding to simpler logos to also work for clothing etc, and there's also a very opposite threads of clubs going back to older logos, like Atléti and Ajax.

This overlaps with my work, so I find re-brands interesting. Figured more of you would have opinions, so I'm starting a thread on it. I will be posting a couple of recent re-brands in the next couple of comments, feel free to quote the ones you have opinions on, or weigh in on older re-brands.
 
Tottenham Hotspurs rebrand
So, the short and sweet of it, is that they've simplified the logo by removing the words. It's a good move if you want to use it in a more versatile way, i.e. clothing. They've also added hallmarks (not sure how they're planning on using these) and a monogram. Honestly, I love monograms, but I think Spurs' one is a bit meh.



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Primary cockerel on the left, and secondary cockerel icon on the right.

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I don't even know. Trying to show the versatility of the new icon.

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The new monogram

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New custom typeface.

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New secondary wordmark.

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Instagram post examples.

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Example of hallmark in use.

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Heh, surely they won't go for this.

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Adboard examples


Color Palette


Hallmarks

Not sure why the imgur videos aren't playing properly.
 
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Ajax Rebrand. Going back to their old logo, like Atléti did.
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NYCFC Rebrand. Small, simplifying logo changes, adds a monogram-like simplified logo for merchandise.
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Typography example

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Merch with the monogram.

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icon set.

FC Copenhagen and Feyenoord have alos made minor touch-ups lately.

Ligue 1 & 2 from this summer
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Uniquim said:
Didn't see a thread about this, but a lot of football clubs have been re-branding. There's the trend of clubs like Juve, and more recently Spurs rebranding to simpler logos to also work for clothing etc, and there's also a very opposite threads of clubs going back to older logos, like Atléti and Ajax.

This overlaps with my work, so I find re-brands interesting. Figured more of you would have opinions, so I'm starting a thread on it. I will be posting a couple of recent re-brands in the next couple of comments, feel free to quote the ones you have opinions on, or weigh in on older re-brands.
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Out of interest which club do you feel has has the most successful rebrand and why?
 
Always quite liked our er... club font I guess you'd call it? Whatever this is:
manchester_united_case_study-04.jpg

No idea how long exactly it's been a thing either. When did the club adopt it?
 
Rebranding can be cool if it's done well. Spurs for example, I think the new logo looks quite sleek without the words. On the other hand, Juventus's new logo looks worse than their old one, which I thought was quite cool.

All depends on what the final product is really, but I would not say that rebranding should be something that is considered wrong or off the table for any club.
 
At Juve it was Agnelli’s idea… trying too much too early maybe, yet the revenue for common ventures will be diverse, with hospitality, entertainment & fashion adding to the pot. With Agnelli out, we just have stronger hospitality and a bit of media / official creator lab, working day to day events and from the large club archive for goals, special things and so on.
 
I don’t think you need to abandon an iconic crest just to have a more modern icon for a clothing brand.

Liverpool have turned away from their classic logo when they could’ve just used the same more modern one on their clothing ranges and kept the proper crest for jerseys. Same goes for Juventus who now have something that looks like it belongs down the back of a Sports Direct beside Dunlop and Everlong.

We’ve used the Red Devil logo on 3rd kits for a couple of years and could use that on clothes while keeping our iconic Manchester United crest.

That said, a couple of the modernisations have improved things. Arsenals crest is much better than their old one and both Villa and West Ham have done decent jobs.
 
Really appreciate good graphic design work, and it's often quite overlooked as part of an identity and style.

It's kind of like good goalkeeping - to the untrained eye it's excellent when it's not noticed. But the untrained eye can DEFINITELY tell when there's bad graphic design/keeping.
 
The new old Ajax logo is a pretty horrible design in my opinion.

Perhaps controversially I also feel like our badge has looked horribly dated for a good while now.
 
Aren't these just redesigns? While a rebrand would aim at making a change of the identity / products visible? Like selling many different kinds of sport instead of being a football club?
 
Ichabod Ferguson said:
The new old Ajax logo is a pretty horrible design in my opinion.

Perhaps controversially I also feel like our badge has looked horribly dated for a good while now.
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I don't think ours looks dated at all (each to their own) the thing I hate about our badge is we omitted the Football Club part. That's the bit I would reinstate and then leave it very much alone.

I think a lot of the badges/emblems today are so basic and lack any creativity. I personally think Arsenal, Fulham, City, Juventus newest iterations of club badge are boring with very basic designs that lack any creativity.

But that's just my own personal take on it. Obviously others have a different outlook
 
Ichabod Ferguson said:
The new old Ajax logo is a pretty horrible design in my opinion.

Perhaps controversially I also feel like our badge has looked horribly dated for a good while now.
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It’s unique and instantly recognisable. It’s a classic and shouldn’t change unless they want to add the words ‘football club’ again.
 
TheReligion said:
Out of interest which club do you feel has has the most successful rebrand and why?
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Honestly, the La Liga rebrand was great imo.
It worked on every level, even with team colors, had monochrome logos for all teams, and goal animations (although more basic) before the current Premier League one.
Stood out among the other leagues, was easily adoptable, and easily recognizable.

I can probably find more examples if you like you like, but the in-game graphics are great. One of the better league re-brands imo. The logo change above doesn't really do it justice.

And even though my football heart hates the new Juve logo, as mentioned by @Cloud7 @Bepi @diarm and @Steve Bruce, it's actually very good for non-footballing ventures, like clothing. And Juve have been active in promoting clothing and streetwear outside of direct replica sales. A good similar example is how United have been using the devil as an element in clothing sales that aren't directly related to the football side. Examples below

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Now, our example apparel is quite close to sports clothing in the mid-90s, which is also kind of in atm, but Juve and other clubs, most noticeably through third kits (look at most PL clubs and our third kits in recent years) as an item in fashion streetwear, and there's a market for easily recognizable and fashionable items. If you slap the proper logo on there it's football item, but if you slap a devil, or a cockerel on there, it's a brand, and for those into football it's a club item, but for those not into football it's a fashion brand. There's a market and there's an income there. A lot of clubs dabble in this with third kits, and some clubs do it through retro wear (like the United examples), and Juve and other clubs want a bigger market share and for that you need a simplified logomark that's not directly linked to a football club, because that makes it more territorial.

Some of those retro 1968 and 80s wear we launched a year ago also used the devil only, and looked great.
 
Take a look at Wales’ current branding on social media (IG best) if you haven’t seen it already @Uniquim, I love it. The colours, typeface, everything is great.
 
youngrell said:
Take a look at Wales’ current branding on social media (IG best) if you haven’t seen it already @Uniquim, I love it. The colours, typeface, everything is great.
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That's by Bulletproof and re-done in 2019. I quite like it. I also like how they can extract the dragon as an individual element.
Here are some of the branding elements theWelsh FA were presented below, obviously some of these have been refined and improved upon since then, and looks better now

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Uniquim said:
That's by Bulletproof and re-done in 2019. I quite like it. I also like how they can extract the dragon as an individual element.
Here are some of the branding elements theWelsh FA were presented below, obviously some of these have been refined and improved upon since then, and looks better now

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They’ve moved on again since this. The crest is the same but all the graphics and type have had a massive improvement.
 
youngrell said:
They’ve moved on again since this. The crest is the same but all the graphics and type have had a massive improvement.
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Yeah, I noticed. Couldn't find any announcements about separate re-brands, but either they did another one, or they've had another agency in just to make assets for Socials etc.What happens a lot is that in-house resources can't fully utilize branding assets. In some cases it just starts slipping, in other they bring in someone to make more assets and the branding gets tweaked, but yeah current assets looks better, I agree. I'll see if I can find more announce assets, but if not it's just another agency (or the same) that came into produce SoMe assets.

edit: nvm, found it. They had andco studio in 2023: https://andco.studio/cymru-mens-national-team-campaign-creative/
They've ditched the repetition wording, but rest is more or less they same, just a bit simpler in use.
 
Check out the Icelandic NT rebranding @Uniquim. Definitely a positive change in my opinion. Switching from Errea to Puma also helped.
 
Premier League modifying it’s brand, colors, identity over the years has also been quite good imo.

For me, a club like Ajax can get away with doing a new old logo because they have a rich history which it honors. A football logo is supposed to convey a story and/or traditions, which is also why I find Man City and their satellite clubs logos so generic and soulless. But then again that sort of fits them at the same time.
 
Uniquim said:
…new brands and logos…
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Yeah, you nailed it perfectly! The simpler the better for sharing on as many media and as much hardware / smartphone models possible. As for fashion, while a trouser or a sweater sporting the old crest would just be unthinkable for non-hardcore fans, a stylisized red devil (for United) or a slick J (for Juve) is more affordable.
 
Snow said:
Check out the Icelandic NT rebranding @Uniquim. Definitely a positive change in my opinion. Switching from Errea to Puma also helped.
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do you mean the Knattspyrnusamband Íslands. They actually did two rounds in 2020.
You see the first round in the insta profile picture, and the one after in graphics like this one:

Thing is, I quite liked the old logo, more than both the new ones, but I really like the branding the goes with the re-branding.

here are the logo variations
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Thing is, they dipped hard into the four guardians of Iceland, also seen in the coat of arms, which is where a lot of the elements for the new branding came from.
They produced some pretty epic videos and elements to go along with it that you can see here if you want: https://landvaettir.ksi.is/en/ (it's worth a peak if you like the branding)

I would've preferred the new branding elements along with the old flag logo, evne if the old flag logo looks like a costa rican flag. It has more character than the new logomark (the one with red dot) which also doesn't look icelandic. :D The rest of the branding is nice though, even though I'm not sure I could isolate elements and say 'yup that's icelandic' which is a minus.
 
I've just seen Jaguar's new logo. Horrible.
 
The ones I really dislike are the Italian logo's mostly. Juve, Inter and Fiorentina's new logo's are just shite IMO. And in Inter's case it's not necessarily the logo but the fact they got rid of the old color scheme of blue and gold. It was iconic to me.
 
V.O. said:
Always quite liked our er... club font I guess you'd call it? Whatever this is:
manchester_united_case_study-04.jpg

No idea how long exactly it's been a thing either. When did the club adopt it?
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I also quite like it. It's been implemented well and it might be because I've seen it so many times, like in some of the other use examples on their page, but I do associate it with the club.

Font usage
I looked into this a bit about when the club adopted it. A little bit difficult to find info on when we made changes, but I found some references to Springetts, the company you linked the picture from have been involved with the club since 2001 and that info is sourced from a 2003 book by Clare Dowdy on logos. (Seems Springetts also did the The Barclaycard Premiership sponsorship branding in 2001), so it's likely they've been involved whenever there's been minor or major changes to our branding. Unsure if they were involved all the way back to the 1998 logo change or not, but it seems likely.

In any case their website claims the logo have remained the same since 1998, and that seems to be correct, which in that case is when the font was first taken into use by the club. Looks like it first appeared in the badge on kits for the 2006-07 season, and going by old photos of the stadium, it looks like the all-red plating with this font was put up in the summer of 2006. Before that we had logos like budweiser and pepsi around the tier walls, as seen in this picture from 2005. Looks like the font is already in use for the manutd.com boards etc, even before 2006 but seems like we expanded the use of this font as part of a bit of a branding improvement in and around the stadium in the summer of 2006. Unsure exactly when we started using it online, waybackmachine isn't working for me at the moment, but would assume around a similar time. Possibly later for our website.

What font?
In any case, the font is Stone Sans ITC or a variation of it. Springetts writes on their page that the logotype was 'hand drawn and specifically letter spaced', and it does look like it's tweaked a little bit, several letters seem to be sit in-between Stone Sans Semibold and Bold, a lot of them are similar to Stone Sans Medium, like the R with slight extension on the second leg, and they've closed the curve on the P, which is left with a small gap on a lot of Stone Sans variations. In any case that seems to only apply to the logotype as the most recent brand book I could find (dated 2018) lists the font as Stone Sans ITC Medium and Semi for communication headlines and body copy etc.

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Btw, brand manuals can be quite fun, and includes tone of voice, brand essence and what not. It can make for a bit awkward reading, but the function is to give everyone that creates something for the club, whether internal or external resources can tow the same line. Basically as a designer you'll get a brand manual to read through when you're hired by companies with a defined brand, and they'll have in-house resources to police and protect the usage of the brand, which is massively important for recognition.

Posting a few photos from the man utd brand manual below. The latest edition I found was from 2018, both for Man Utd and for the MU Foundation which have similar branding and were updated at the same time. Keep in mind that the manual is likely tweaked a little bit since 2018. From working in a corporation we would produce a extra manuals for specific use cases, and in-house designers will at times move away from some elements of the branding and adapt new ones etc without breaking the brand. That being said the 2018 MU foundation brand manual (which is not the same as the club manual) is hosted openly on the club web server here, so might be that 2018 one is still the one in use. The pictures below are from the club manual:

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It also has rules for placement and usage of the logo, use of historic images, color codes etc etc etc.
 
It's quite funny that the name Tottenham Hotspur is so detrimental that they have to remove it to be more marketable.
 
Uniquim said:
I also quite like it. It's been implemented well and it might be because I've seen it so many times, like in some of the other use examples on their page, but I do associate it with the club.

Font usage
I looked into this a bit about when the club adopted it. A little bit difficult to find info on when we made changes, but I found some references to Springetts, the company you linked the picture from have been involved with the club since 2001 and that info is sourced from a 2003 book by Clare Dowdy on logos. (Seems Springetts also did the The Barclaycard Premiership sponsorship branding in 2001), so it's likely they've been involved whenever there's been minor or major changes to our branding. Unsure if they were involved all the way back to the 1998 logo change or not, but it seems likely.

In any case their website claims the logo have remained the same since 1998, and that seems to be correct, which in that case is when the font was first taken into use by the club. Looks like it first appeared in the badge on kits for the 2006-07 season, and going by old photos of the stadium, it looks like the all-red plating with this font was put up in the summer of 2006. Before that we had logos like budweiser and pepsi around the tier walls, as seen in this picture from 2005. Looks like the font is already in use for the manutd.com boards etc, even before 2006 but seems like we expanded the use of this font as part of a bit of a branding improvement in and around the stadium in the summer of 2006. Unsure exactly when we started using it online, waybackmachine isn't working for me at the moment, but would assume around a similar time. Possibly later for our website.

What font?
In any case, the font is Stone Sans ITC or a variation of it. Springetts writes on their page that the logotype was 'hand drawn and specifically letter spaced', and it does look like it's tweaked a little bit, several letters seem to be sit in-between Stone Sans Semibold and Bold, a lot of them are similar to Stone Sans Medium, like the R with slight extension on the second leg, and they've closed the curve on the P, which is left with a small gap on a lot of Stone Sans variations. In any case that seems to only apply to the logotype as the most recent brand book I could find (dated 2018) lists the font as Stone Sans ITC Medium and Semi for communication headlines and body copy etc.
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Interesting - thanks for the bit of research. It does seem like a small part of the furniture of the club at this point.

I think if I saw that lettering in a completely unrelated context I'd immediately think 'United', which I guess is probably some kind of branding achievement with a relatively plain, simple font.
 
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