Anybody from a services background treasures their regimental badge – and so do football supporters across the nation, because after all, every one of us feels like we are part of a regiment of sorts as well. And so we should.
Welsh regiments tend to have goats as mascots, with a senior NCO dedicated to looking after said beast as well as presenting it in immaculate form for parade duty, complete with regimental regalia. Other animal mascots are used by different regiments of course, and from my certain knowledge, they are quickly adopted into the “family”.
What most MFW readers would not know as I’ve never openly declared it before is that I’m a bit of a graphic artist. Editor Gary chooses our pictures, writes all the headlines and, you know what? I’m so happy that it’s him and not me. Far less responsibility for me and his choices are better than mine anyway.
As you’ll know by now, our revamped badge has been redesigned and was presented yesterday.
Apparently, consultants were brought in and they do not come cheap, believe me. NCFC have had this one on the simmer for a while now and were just waiting for a positive moment to reveal the new creation. Dean Smith in situ, City 2, Soton1 – let’s go.
It has to be a subjective view from me. Could I have done any better? Probably not but as nobody consulted me I had no input in the process whatsoever. Did I expect to be asked for my opinion? No!
The badge I have worn with pride for 40 – that’s FORTY – years has been amended. The changes are subtle it must be said but I cannot see the point of them. The badge has lost its black edging and our Canary looks a bit chubbier and seems to have acquired a more parrot-like beak. It looks like it can be printed directly onto Joma tops rather than a need for stitching it on in the factory.
I am to Prada what the Venus de Milo is to sleeves but I really do not see the point of this exercise. Me a fashionista? You’re having a grin, as anyone who’s seen me in my regular Ramones outfit would quickly vouch for.
After six or seven looks I think it’s bloody awful and those who designed it should be reimbursed with twenty whole quid for their efforts. I really do not like it.
As soon as he saw it a mate said: “We paid a lot of money to have a border removed and spruce it up. Not impressed at all”.
I’m not a Luddite in any way but I simply don’t see this redesign as an upgrade. To me the work on the “new” badge is a bit like me writing a poorly constructed sentence, reviewing and rewording it before I pass it on to Gary – like about 20 seconds work.
This unexpected piece isn’t written in an incendiary sense – many of you MFW folks out there might like the new-fangled design far more than I do because the great thing about *art* is that it is truly subjective.
Let MFW know what you think folks – if I’ve got this one wrong I’m fully prepared to be slapped down.
No apologies for the appropriate music though. 🙂
Castle is ok. The lion is an improvement. The canary looks a lot worse. Since the most prominent part of the design is the canary then I guess overall my opinion is that it is not great. If it cost a lot more than the original 10 quid for the previous badge then I think it was a waste of money. If the national media can’t get our badge right they should be sorted out – not our badge. A spell in pundit prison I say!
Hi Sue
Some picky people reckon the previous lion was based on a heraldic image and the castle had the wrong number of castellations on it – but we all knew what they both represented!
Pundit prison – now there’s a concept. Life sentence for Mr Lineker?
Cheers
I was expecting something a little more, the canary looks like it is modelled on the inflatable ones in the canary show, Agreed the Lion needed a little work especially the face and tail. I never bothered about the number of turrets on the castle.
I am sure there are several fans who could have done a job, for next to nothing instead of paying a shed load for this design, Which must have taken all of a couple of minutes to do..
Thumbs down from me
Hi Lad
To me the Canary looks like a pigeon with jaundice and has lost about 30% of its tail – this one couldn’t take off if it tried and it reminds me of the inflatables too.
You would indeed think that someone in-house could [and should] have created a similar design *for free* that would look just as good as this.
Cheers
The previous canary was too detailed and now it has been de-tailed?
🙂
Feels like change for change sake. Not a big fan of the new badge but I’ll get over it.
Hi Bruce
Apparently it’s all to do with digital branding and marketing – I had a quick look on NCFC official and read the reasoning behind it so I guess it’s a case of *surely they know what they’re doing* from me.
But I’ve been wrong with that assumption before…
Cheers
Speaking as someone who used to breed canaries, I think the shape of the bird on the new badge is more accurate than the current badge, although you’re right, the tail is truncated, which was obviously done to fit the canary more centrally. The castle and the lion are definite improvements. It does look a bit bare without the black outline, though.
The club have mentioned that there are several different iterations of the “current” badge around Carrow Road itself, so it’s a bit hard to say what the “correct” version is.
Overall, I’m not unhappy with the new one.
Hi Jim
I must admit I’ve never noticed the disparity at the stadium between the crests before, but I rarely go around three sides of it so probably only know the ones outside and inside the Barclay.
I’d definitely like to see a change to the outdated scripted font, which was probably trendy in the 1970s but is now really showing its age.
Cheers
Looks like the old badge was created with care , any kid with a laptop and a couple of paint programmes could have knocked out the new one in minutes .
Hi Bernie
That’s exactly how I look at it too. I’d like to know exactly how much it cost!
They’re claiming the whole process took two years but the result looks like two minutes of work from my viewpoint.
Cheers
I won’t be buying anything with the new crest on.
It’s hideous and one colour as a Newcastle fan wrote in their Chronicle newspaper!
Another waste of money on rebranding. We told our employers the same at Royal Mail when they went the Insignia route.
May as well adopt the Hitchin Town crest instead, as the club is going backwards!
Do what they want, they always do, us fans are going to vote with our lack of spends.
Won’t be buying a ticket with that crest on it.
Was priced out of football years ago.
At least they cannot put a price on my feelings!
OTBC
Hi Andy
Interesting that you should mention Newcastle – there’s a really good article on one of the Mags’ fansites saying that they’re dreading the threatened revamp as theirs is now the longest-standing badge in the PL – c1988 or something like that – and they’re proud of it as it truly represents their City.
Possibly the most ridiculous logo change of modern times is this year’s BBC one, but luckily MFW is a football site so I don’t have to go down that route!
Thank you.
I really couldn’t care less about the badge; it looks ok. I think the country would be a better place if some people had a less rabid affiliation to flags and standards generally.
I would, however, have loved to have been in the Fine City last night to see the crest beamed onto the castle. The photos were magnificent
Hi Don
I had no idea that was planned so like you I’ve only seen the photographs.
I get where you’re coming from on the other point but I’d really, really like to think that football transcends that.
I hope so anyway.
Cheers
I’m actually in favour, as it looks very much less cluttered than the previous iteration. Most of the comments I’ve seen aren’t in favour, but there will always be some fans who would prefer that we hadn’t changed,
When I worked at UEA, I didn’t like the new logo that they changed to, but when I see the old one now I cringe.
Hi Ed
I went to the UEA myself so I know exactly what you’re talking about – I’ve still got an old hoodie with the logo on it in white with *Do Diffrent* as the motto on the scroll underneath the logo itself.
Apart from a leather biker jacket it’s the oldest piece of clothing I possess.
Yes the new badge has been cleaned up but I’m a bit of a sentimentalist at heart so currently prefer the old one.
The new incarnation will probably grow on me I s’pose.
Cheers
The old badge is excellent. I like the off-centre ball, it balances the design. The castle is great. The front half of the lion is terrible (that’s my only issue). The canary is slender, attractive and characterful. The black border delineates the design perfectly.
The new badge is a slightly revamped, less detailed version and – apart from the lion – inferior in every way. The canary itself is a stubby, vapid shocker. It looks cheap, empty and shoddy. (Although I’m sure it wasn’t cheap (no pun intended)).
Suggestion: Sort out the lion and keep everything else as it is.
PS. The club said they spoke to ‘everyone’ about this change. Nobody asked me. Did anybody ask you?
Hi Chris
The centric part was interesting as in with the old one the bird was the focus in that respect rather than the ball and this time they’ve brought them both together.
Actually I did fill in a short and bland survey a few months back about this from NCFC as ST holders are often sent such surveys with the lure of winning a signed shirt or something of that ilk.
I like the concept of an embroidered badge – it’s all I’ve ever known in over 50 years of following football and the idea of screenprints does not appeal to me at all.
Yours, Pierre Cardin.
Hi Martin
The first Canary Badge was designed sitting on a branch back in 1907, 2 years after the it was founded with 1905 underneath it all done by a director who breed the birds and so changed the name from Citizens to the Canaries.
Samuel said 120 years coming up as a canary well I might be 71 but the club as a professional one is only 116 years old and 114 as a canary but we were in the southern league prior to that so I will stop being pedantic.
The original badge of a plain canary on a branch looked good maybe they could have just gone back to that.
I would love to see the City Citizens badge as I have never seen it.
This new one just seems to be a hash up by a company charging loads of money fir a 2 year consultancy fee and who did they consult the Trust, Board, other fan groups I bet no ST holders and there’s 25k of them.
Hi Alex
Chris Sadler [above] got me scratching my head a bit on this and I hazily recollect I might have been sent a very short opinion trawl by NCFC as ST holders do get these from time to time. Trouble is I can’t remember – it could have been a Pink Un survey but I can recall responding so I doubt it was the latter.
I would guess that they ran at least the concept past the Canaries Trust, but only Rob Sainty or Gary F would know for sure.
Fore me it’s still remains a case of *If it ain’t broke*…….
Cheers
NCFC ctually formed in 1902, so will be 120 years very shortly. 1905 is one of the errors in the version used by some national media.
Yes, I’m a pedant 🙃😉
Hi Christopher
I know the centenary shirt was released in 2002 – I’ve got one – and I just did a quick google and we were of course founded in 1902.
What I didn’t know is that we didn’t turn professional until 1905 so maybe that could explain the discrepancy.
Thanks for that 🙂
I think its an improvement in virtually all aspects. Castle and Lion are much cleaner and better for my money. The centering of the ball and angular lines of the canary appeal to me, The one thing I think they have ballsed up horribly is the beak. Why leave that little wedge underneath? It looks odd and wrong to me.
So whilst I think overall its an improvement, a very modest improvement, I really hope that they didn’t spend too much corn on this as it really was fine as was for me. Perhaps change for changes sake, the new design I certainly can’t see encouraging anyone to buy anything extra over what they might have anyway.
I’m sure the new design is considerably more digital friendly. But I’d settle for it just staying stuck better to the shirt. But maybe that’s not such an issue having finally got rid of Errea?
Hi MoO
*I really hope that they didn’t spend too much corn on this* – I love it.
A fair assessment with a pun I hadn’t thought of thrown in for potluck 🙂
Yes, a couple of my Errea badges had to be resecured via the skills of Mrs P – but I think that problem will disappear as it seems like the new one will be screenprinted onto the shirt. From a personal point of view that = yuk!
Cheers
They found issues that nobody cared about (length of time since redesign, accessibility, print quality, consistency) and used it to create a low fidelity illustrator file.
Sure the lion looks more like a lion (although I’d still debate it doesn’t), but the ‘canary’ looks dreadful. A waste of time and money in my books.
Hi Dave
I’m no real graphics expert in the modern age but even back in the early days of the Noughties it was amazing what you could do with a combination of QuarkXpress and Photoshop. Anything really important I couldn’t do myself was quickly bought in from a very reliable local source and usually with only a 48-hour turnaround and an invoice for less than £100.
Sure times change, but I do question the timescale and the £££ involved.
Cheers
Hi Martin,
I studied Electronic Imaging and Communication at University, so I’m semi-qualified to understand the technicalities of what they’re doing. Some of their reasoning is sound, but the results (IMHO) aren’t.
If they’re worried about accessibility then they need to focus on their website and getting it up to WCAG 2.0 AA standards at least. Logos are not high priority because they don’t contain text, or data. They simply need to be recognizable. If the isn’t enough contrast between the yellow and green, that was solvable without a new logo.
If they’re worried about consistency, they could have created a standardized version of the existing one, with some tweaks to line width etc.
If they’re worried about the lion not looking like a lion, it still doesn’t (lion noses don’t go up!)
What’s happened is some design company has hoodwinked them into spending a million quid on ‘modernizing’ Norwich’s image. Rather than fixing what was broken.
Thanks Dave
I know zilch about electronic imaging so that was really interesting.
Seems we both came up with the same conclusion: we wuz robbed 🙂
It’s interesting that somebody clearly had problems with the original crest as I personally don’t care and wouldn’t get the visual nuances contained in a crest but that is me and how my brain works. I’m a numbers person and used to interpreting numeric data so I appreciate a presentation of data in a table, many would like a wordy narrative and others prefer to see a graph. Those in the latter group would see all sorts of issues in the crests that would be invisible to me and by the same token they would struggle to understand my frustrations with poor data presentation. So I can accept that for some people this is a big issue even if it isn’t mine
Hi John
That’s an interesting viewpoint because beyond mental arithmetic I am numerically illiterate – it’s words and pictures only for me!
All I ask from a graphic is that it has a decent legend so I can work out what everything means, but sometimes even then I’m left scratching my head.
Thanks – good comment.
Morning Martin don’t really care what the badge looks like as long as the player wearing it does it justice see you sat for another 21 ,win 🥎⚽
Hi Kev
Yes quite a few people feel that way – nobody can be right on this issue.
Another 2-1 win on Saturday would suit me fine too – see you there.
Cheers
Hi Martin I actually really like it . It’s simple fresh redesign of what we had .
Hi Jim
I’m genuinely pleased that you like it – I’m sure the whole issue will be forgotten about pretty soon – but I’m not appreciative of the change myself.
Thank the Lord we don’t all think the same 🙂
Cheers
Marty, I must confess I’d never taken much notice of the badge detail. But looking now I must say on the older version the castle looks like a piece of Lego and the Lion is just weird, so the new version gets my vote. I also took a look at older shirt badges, Pre war the Canary sat on a branch and faced the other way, post war the Canary did an about face and the branch disappeared. There were no lions, castles or footballs on either, and the top of the shields were scalloped.
Hiya Cutty
I think the most interesting badge I have is on the 2002 centenary shirt where there are a pair of Canaries, one facing east and the other west.
I’ve got my name printed in about 6pt type on that, along with several hundreds of others of ST holders of course.
My mate Keith drew the short straw on that one as his name is half obscured under one of the letters of the then sponsors, the Digital Phone Company.
Storm in a teacup of course, but I’m not fond of it or the money it must have cost.
Cheers pard.
Seemingly in the minority here as I really like – a big improvement in my book.
Interestingly, the Pink’un poll is currently running at:
I like it 40%
It’s okay 26%
Not bothered 15%
Don’t like it 19%
Hi ScotCan
Yes this topic really is subjective as I said in the original article.
I guess the issue for me is that the current one is the only badge I’ve ever known – I’m sure I’ll come round to the new one in time.!
Cheers
Prefer the new lion, the old one actually looks like Bart Simpson!
Prefer the new castle, it is busier, and more ‘designed’.
They could do with adding more content into the ball.
Do not like the new canary one little bit!
Hi Kev
Yes, facially the old lion DID look like Bart Simpson – and long before Matt Groening came along, so maybe that’s where he got his inspiration from!
As somebody quite rightly said earlier, the new Canary looks to have been copied from a very early 1990s inflatable. It sucks.
Cheers
Marty, I forgot to comment on the Canary, neither of ‘em would win ‘Show Bird Of The Month’. However Lowry’s matchstick men nor Picasso’s women were never true to life but many people seem to highly value them.
I reckon Lowry’s work was terrific in the way he depicted run of the mill folks going about their business and although they’re not generally interacting with each other in his paintings you can almost feel the bond – wanted or not – between them.
Picasso? Guernica is the only one I know so I’ll stop there.
I prefer the Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Millais and Rossetti. JW Waterhouse’s *Ladie of Shallote* is the finest original I’ve ever seen. I went to the Tate as a teenager and didn’t realise it was about eight feet by six 🙂
Could you imagine Dali designing our badge?
Picasso? Dali?
It is said that when they each breathed their last, the words…
“nos quedamos levantados… declarado… nos quedamos levantados !”
… were the last ones they spoke.
What we need is a bit of JMW Turner, he of ‘The Fighting Temeraire’, or Thomas Luny, he of ‘The Bombardment of Algiers’, get the blood stirring a bit!
I’d settle for the new Canary if they at least finish the beak!
OTBC !!
I’m no art connoisseur – I just like what I like if you get what I mean.
There were a couple of Turners in the Tate when I went and I was amazed at how pale they appeared under the artificial light. I think the *Fighting Temeraire* was one of them but it’s about 50 years ago now so I can’t be sure. The other one was a seascape sans the battle format – dunno what it was called.
I went on my own that day and got completely and happily lost in the galleries – there was just so much to see and attempt to absorb. I stayed until very nearly chucking out time.
It was the only time I saw a Roy Lichtenstein in the flesh as well – the one with the USAAF Mustang [?] in it.
I’d guess around 1971.
Overall I like it. I was not sure to begin with but am warming to the new design. Are the dimensions of the new and old badges the same? Is the new badge larger? It has an old feel to it the more I study it. I voted not bothered on the pink un poll. I could have quite happily had the club stick with the old badge but since they have taken the time and effort to make the change, I’ll support it. Just hope it did not cost too much money!
Hi Tim
In terms of dimensions Gary’s ensemble at the top of the page suggests the new one might be slightly smaller, but certainly not by very much if indeed it is.
We’ll never know how much the whole exercise cost but I’d rather not find out because I think I’d be very upset if I did.
Thank you.
I quite like it, particularly the more aggressive look in the Canary’s eye! Is it a perfect representation of a canary, a lion and a castle? No. Was the old one? No. Does this matter to me? No.
For me it’s a sensible evolution of the badge I know and love. It’s still instantly recognisable and if it now satisfies the needs of our marketing department and commercial partners too then surely that can only be a good thing.
Hi Tom
Absolutely fair enough.
I reckon I’ll come around to it in time but I’ll anticipate the 22-23 kit launch more than any other from previous years – for all I know it might look a whole lot better on the shirt than it does on the screen!
Thanks
The redesign is fine, but it badly needs a black border, green is too weak a colour to use directly next to mid tones like blues, greys, red and greens, it needs a black border to frame it and make it stand out on all of the potential different colour backgrounds for things such as shirts, merchandise and websites, or the palette of background colours used will have to be drastically reduced.
Hi Jon
Great point about the border.
You’re quite right about the *weakness* of green in this context. Obviously it’s one of the three in an RGB home printer cartridge but in terms of CMYK it isn’t even one of the four primaries.
As I said to Tom [above] I’m only really interested in what it looks like on the shirt itself, but I agree with you that the days of petrol blue have surely gone. Good – I hated that top!
Thanks – interesting comment.
Where it doesn’t work for a particular background, I’m sure they’ll just mix up the colours like they have with the current badge on the away and third kits.
Funnily enough I’m just going out so I’m wearing a black official NCFC parka with a mid-grey badge on it and it works. But without the border [grey in this case] the badge detail would simply fade into the background.
I guess you’re right but I would like to see some kind of outline retained.
I’m a signed up hater of the re-brand. I adored our old crest, it was powerful and really stood out. I shall miss it.
That said, I was Googling crest changes from other clubs yesterday and was reminded of the furore when Arsenal pointed the cannon, on theirs, the other way!
Now comparing their new and old crest, the new one blows the old, out of the water.
Perhaps time will soften the blow. I’m already warming to Dean Smith for instance…..
Hi Martin
Yes many Arsenal fans didn’t like the change at the time – I think their fansite *The Daily Cannon* had to reverse its own logo as a result of it!
I don’t really like it but it might look better on a physical shirt than it does on screen, although the lack of a border will make it *bleed* onto the colour of the top it’s placed on. Maybe it will be okay on the home shirts but I’m not so sure about other background colours as Jon Hare mentions [above].
Cheers
Dreadful, puerile, minimalism.
Graphic designers present themselves as ‘experts’ – justifying their foisting lazy, minimalist crap on the rest of us as being ‘sophisticated’ or ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’ (despite minimalism being pushed for the last century).
“Removing unnecessary detail” – such as the black outline – removes any sense of craftsmanship.
Such lazyness is disrespectful to customers – a.k.a fans.