Everton FC’s new crest to be designed by fans (and Kenyon Fraser)
Following its botched rebrand process earlier this year, Premier League football team Everton FC says its new crest will be designed by Liverpool-based group Kenyon Fraser, in consultation with the club’s fans.
Back in May, Everton unveiled a new club crest, designed by its in-house graphics team. However, following online protests from fans, the club announced that it would drop the new mark for the 2014/15 season, and work with supporters to develop a replacement logo.
The club has now opened this consultation process and says fans will be able to contribute both through an online questionnaire and through a series of focus groups.
The online option will also allow fans to upload their own sketches or designs for the new club crest.
Supporters will have until 15 September to contribute, after which Kenyon Fraser will work with Everton’s senior executive team to develop the new logo.
The consultancy will create a series of options, which will then be presented to fans at the end of September to make a final decision.
Everton says that every supporter with a registered customer number – some 300 000 fans – will be able to select their favourite design on the club’s website.
The results of the vote will be announced on 3 October and the new crest will be rolled out to all touchpoints for the 2014/15 season.
Everton says, ‘The club prides itself on its ability to embrace feedback. The extensive consultation process will ensure all supporters play a fundamental role in the development of the next piece of Everton history.’
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Could be a good way to pacify a fan base and also by allowing them to contribute there will be a nice sense of ownership – maybe they could expand the remit to reward fans who come up with the ‘winning’ idea somehow… free season tickets maybe…
Greg
http://Strat-Talking.com
As a graphic designer I am looking forward to using my footballing knowledge to help me manage the team under a similar democratic process.
Given what’s gone before, the in-house design does look perfectly adequate, in fact it’s quite a good update. Do the minority of vocal and active supporters really represent the silent majority? and even if they do, bold innovative design doesn’t usually emerge from broad consensus.
Everton are NOT a Premiership football team, they are a Premier League football team.
This is a sad moment for the design industry. Where do we go from here? This is the worst story so far on design u-turns. It’s important that professionals and experts have an influential voice and power in any field. We’re all aware there’s an opinion of “Surely it can’t be that hard, we could do it ourselves” mentality in places but this is just basically agreeing with this sentiment. I hope designers look at this as a warning across the board to stand by their work and integrity. I know it’s easier said than done but something has to happen to stop this from happening again.
Surely the issue is that had the original design team done any consultation with the fans (the end clients in reality) this would never have happened. All this Says more about the worrying arrogance of some designers in our industry
I agree with some of that to a point but then working with any massive brand you have to encounter focus groups and multiple stakeholders… football clubs are no different. These fans wear this brand on their chest, some in other places and although I like the new design not including the people that support the club can be seen as a slight on them.
I’ve sat in lots of strategy meetings and thought I could just go off and design this brand with my team, but then the boxes are not ticked and there is a process in place. With this project the process wasn’t clearly thought out, now they are trying to rectify it by including the fans.
This isn’t the worst story on design u-turns or a sad moment for the design industry, it’s a re-think of the process they undertook with their loyal fanbase regardless of the quality of work produced.
Dreadful move on behalf of all involved. Spineless — we’ll be back to ‘public competitions’ before we know it.