OUGD603 - Sports Rebranding - Research of Clubs

As part of a research brief into rebranding a sports identity, I will be looking at the history behind a team's emblem, as well as the uses of the design. This way it will be possible to understand best how the client's audience would want their teams branding to look. It will also help me to understand how the branding can be applied to specific forms of a club's identity. For example, the brief could also involve designing the identity with promotional, commercial and executive uses in mind. For a football team there are a number of different ways to apply their identity to a wide variety of formats. This includes the crest or emblem on the player's kits, the colour schemes used in their websites and the information printed on game tickets to name a few. Gathering a range of primary and secondary research will help to build up a picture of how a sports brand identity should look.

Football teams

When thinking about which team to rebrand, I began by choosing different Premier League clubs based on their crests. Burnley FC's logo contains a lot of details and mixed colours, Fulham FC's logo was very basic and AFC Bournemouth's logo features shapes that did not look correctly aligned.

Editing these logos, will require further knowledge of each club's history and the reason for the current logo designs. From here, I will be able to redesign the logos and choose a club that I wish to continue rebranding as a result.

Burnley FC

• nicknamed the Clarets for their claret and blue football kits 
• Stalk at the top of the logo refers to the Starkie family. It holds a de Lacy knot in it's beak and stands on a hill surrounded by cotton plants, which refers to the cotton trade in Burnley.
• The hand represents the town's motto "hold to the truth"
• The bees refer to the phrase "busy as a bee"
• The arrow in the centre represents the local river Brune
• The lion represents royalty, after they were the first team to have a monarchy visit their ground.
• The club originally used the latin phrase "pretiumque et causa laboris", meaning "the prize and cause of our labours".

Fulham FC

• Craven Cottage is the club's ground
• 1879 was the year it was founded
• Nicknamed the Cottagers, after the cottage located on the grounds of the stadium, which burnt down in 1888. This was rebuilt in 1903 and remains at the ground to this day.
• The club wears black and white kits
• The shield in the logo is reference to the original Fulham Metropolitan Borough Council's (FMBC) coat of arms.
• The FMBC coat of arms features crossed swords on a red background, in reference to the arms of the sea of London.
• The red used on FMBC is also were the current Fulham FC takes its red from.
• 1987 the club considers merging with QPR due to financial difficulty, however they are saved when Jimmy Hill stepped up as chairman of the team.
• 1997 - the club is bought by Mohammed Al Fayed.
• 2010 - Fulham make it to the final of the Europa League before being beaten by Atletico Madrid.
• Johnny Haynes was Fulham's best player and nicknamed the Maestro.

AFC Bournemouth

• The club was founded in 1899 as Boscombe St. John's Institute FC. 
• The club was renamed in 1923 to Bournemouth and Boscombe Athletic FC in 1923
• This was the name until 1972, when it becomes AFC Bournemouth (Association Football Club).
• The badge of AFC Bournmouth was first used from 1971 until 1981. 
• The idea of it was to represent progress, and features the supposed silhouette of Dicky Dowsett’s head, a player who became a prolific goal scorer for the club during 1957-1962.