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Re: New Badge

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 9:23 am
by medlocke
Wintergreen wrote: Fri Nov 06, 2020 11:19 pm Sadly they showed the Mickey Mouse badge on Sky.

In comparison the badge on the players jerseys really did look good.

What a complete, unadulterated horlicks from the club.
The badge looked terrible when it kept popping up on those info banner things, was just a red and white mess

Re: New Badge

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 9:31 am
by josie andrews
That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but it does look good on the shirts I’ve just got much better than just the badge if you know what I mean 😊

Re: New Badge

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 12:34 pm
by jobo
josie andrews wrote: Sat Nov 07, 2020 9:31 am That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but it does look good on the shirts I’ve just got much better than just the badge if you know what I mean 😊
Same here Josie. First impression was it's a poor design but now think it looks pretty good.

Anyhow, I always liked Gimli from Lord of The Rings and that's what it reminds me of.

Re: New Badge

Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2020 10:48 pm
by Mike
Flickered badly on SkY's coverage. Hopefully they can fix that seeing as it's designed to work well digitally!

Re: New Badge

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2020 7:59 pm
by boggart
Please make some of the old badge on squares of cloth that can be sewn, or stuck, or velcro'd, onto sweatshirts, polos etc for us traditionalists, for sale online etc. I'm old enough to remember how it was when got your school colours and your Mum, or, for the more 'woke' among us (and Chris Radlinski), you, yourself; could sew it onto the top pocket of your blazer. Brilliant. I don't think this would compromise the new, youthful, thrusting image of The New Youthful Thrusting Wigan Warriors, do you?

Re: New Badge

Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2020 8:05 pm
by morley pie eater
Hindley and Abram Grammar School changed from the traditional Hindley crest to just a yellow hind (strange choice of colour since they are 'red' deer) in the early 1960s.

Pity they didn't have social media back then, so we could have all had a rant about it.

Re: New Badge

Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2020 7:34 am
by POMVICT
Hi all, first time poster but long time follower of the boards.

Based in Aus, I've only just caught up on the Huddersfield game and only caught the new badge out of the corner of my eye after the first try. I nearly fell off my chair.

Like many of you, I wasn't impressed and the less said about the club's corporate spiel and so-called reasons behind the change, the better. As someone who knows a little about branding myself, the talk about digital and small scale formats doesn't hold water when you consider the damage done by tearing up tradition and good will with the fans.

The pity is, it isn't exactly a bad design (although it is an almost pixel for pixel rip off of Man City's badge - which I'll leave to one side), but it strays too far from the original. They've tried to do too much.

With a few small changes, they could have still had a modern badge but kept some of the tradition with it.

I doubt the club will want to lose face by performing a complete U-turn, but maybe something like this might be a viable compromise between the two?

(I've tried to attach my own effort)
Wigan Badge - New (Edited)
Wigan Badge - New (Edited)
Wigan Alternative Badge.png (159.26 KiB) Viewed 1117 times

Re: New Badge

Posted: Mon Nov 09, 2020 8:31 pm
by Mike
The castle, whilst being a connection with the old badge, doesn't really have any particular connection or say anything about the club. Nothing on the old crest in isolation does really. The crest is just the town crest.

Obviously the blue's all wrong, but other than that this one does look fine to me.

I've been reviewing the other club crests and none are particularly simple IMO.

Re: New Badge

Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2020 5:02 am
by POMVICT
I'm sure your tongue is firmly in cheek over the blue! I've never understood why some people have such an aversion to blue just because the town's other team (who don't even play the same code) happen to wear it!

Blue has been in our crest for the best part of 25 years and it seems only natural to carry it across in a banner of some sort. Besides the fact that some of the most popular away kits we've ever had have been blue and white; but I digress.

I think the badge needs another block of colour besides (cherry) red and white. Otherwise it looks like one big red blob at a distance or in small format - as we all saw on Sky.

If I remember correctly, the castle was used independently of the rest of the crest on TV back in the mid nineties. I definately remember it being used by the BBC for the Challenge Cup finals around that time.

Re: New Badge

Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2020 7:44 am
by Wintergreen
Image

It's a bit like throwing away your Rolls Royce and replacing it with a Dacia.

Can anyone actually say they prefer the new version? Honestly?


Reading the statement by KR.

“We know that through this process we may upset a few people, but we need to be bold and brave (You didn't "need" to be anything. You chose to adopt a new logo) and if we want to take our brand to new places and be aspirational with it, now is the time for change.(You don't need a new logo to do this)

The move found its origins in the Super League remodelling of last year, when leading sports brand agency Nomad - whose portfolio of clients also includes the Premier League - started a push to move the sport forward in how it presents itself at the top level. The London-based (enough said. Probably never heard of Wigan)company also did an audit of clubs, with its feedback telling Wigan that they had a workable nickname but a crest that had little digital, broadcast or commercial potential.

“This underlined what we’d felt internally for a while, which was that the crest needed modernising (and you never thought of asking the supporters? The people who pay your wages and will be supporters of the club long after you and IL have left?),” Radlinski explains. “We started the process and that began with the chairman Ian Lenagan, which we thought would be a difficult discussion.

“But he was pretty clear in his understanding that it needed to happen, it needed to happen now, and it needed to be radical. (Again, it didn't "need" to be anything, it was his choice.) We met the designers, jumped in with both feet and consulted with lots of people on the journey.”

The Bolton-born chief designer on the project for Nomad, Stuart Watson, had his own emotional attachment to the project. “In the living room at home, our family has got the Wigan crest on the wall, and it’s been there since I was born,” he says. “I’ve literally grown up with it. This will probably make my mum the proudest of any job I’ve done over the last 20 years, and I’ve been honoured to be a part of it.

“I understand the huge amount of respect, love, admiration and passion for the current badge. I want to assure people that’s not going away and it will be a mark of heritage. But the world has changed unrecognisably over the last 10 years in terms of digitally and broadcast, and what we look to do with logos now is make them so they can burst to life on social media and on television.


Nomad partner Stuart Watson has been a key figure in the rebrand (Image: Wigan Warriors)
“Unfortunately the old crest is so complex it doesn’t shrink down, it doesn’t reduce well - it doesn’t do the job it needs to do in the modern world. That’s the reason for change, and hopefully to attract a new audience as well.”They got this COMPLETELY wrong. You don't have to know EVERY detail of the badge to know it's the "Wigan" badge. The badge of Newcastle FC follows the same logic. You don't have to know the detail to immediately recognise that it is the Newcastle badge

Still, the project was far from plain sailing. When Watson came back with an initial concept, it didn’t fit what Radlinksi was looking for.

“Nomad are market leaders in what they do and tremendous professionals - the process of consultation and design was very thorough, with three months of conversations before they even picked a pencil up,” Radlinski recalls. “But when we got the first concept back it was way off, more like a knight.

“I had to be really honest and when I first saw it my heart dropped(Ever heard the saying "go with your gut"?). I will have to front a lot of this up, and I knew I couldn’t stand up in front of Wiganers and say this is the way forward. It just wasn’t what we all envisaged and I had to be really honest.

“It’s fair to say they didn’t take it well at the time and he probably needed the weekend to calm down and reassess, but Stuart came back on Monday, we had another chat and share badges that we liked, and within three weeks after that he came back with a different vision.”

Watson has similar memories of that initial discussion. “It was quite chastening,” he admits. “We’d created this logo that we were really excited by and was punchy. But in fairness it was just a generic warrior, and it could have been anyone’s.

“Kris just pushed us to think a bit deeper and make it completely authentic and true to Wigan Warriors. It made us take a few steps back and we developed a process of working together. We were on the back foot and knew the next time we presented to Kris it had to be right.

“We did a whole deep dive into what made a Brigantes Warrior, their connection with Wigan and why it’s right for them. It wasn’t nice, but it was probably the most important thing that happened.”

Brigantes was the name of a tribe that inhabited Wigan and other large parts of northern England before and during the Roman era, with a group of the club’s supporters(the less said about this group of "supporters" the better.....) taking their title. The Brigantes history became an integral part of the rebrand project following extensive discussions with fans.(Oh behave! No-one had heard of the Brigantes before said group above started using the term).

“There we some elements in our badge that our supporters said were non-negotiable,” Radlinski explains. “It had to say ‘Ancient and Loyal’ and it had to reference 1872. We added a couple of other things like the cherry and white hoops in the background and the shield, which is the actual shield from the original crest.

“What’s new is the warrior in middle. Now we do have some fans than don’t like ‘Warriors’ and we’ve never had one on the crest. We stumbled across a narrative about the Brigantes Warriors who were prevalent in northern England historically and came back with some images of them.

“They all had a helmet and facial hair(even the women? Wow.), Nomad added the WW into the beard, but the real narrative came about the eyes. It came from a work colleague who thought there was something about a Wiganer’s eyes - something you didn’t see in the eyes of his hometown of Warrington - a determination, a defiance, this desire to prove people wrong(Oh please!! I've heard everything now).

“When he was saying that you could see the designer getting excited by this new story (and?) He went away, and within three weeks of the first badge, he came back with a new one on the back of this story. We’ve tweaked it a little over the last four months but it’s not changed that much - as soon as we saw the first draft of this crest we realised we were onto something. We fell in love with it pretty much straight away.”


The circular badge is also a nod to Wigan’s Northern Soul links, and will be central to a new range of clothing that aims to move the club’s merchandising performance forward significantly.

“In the past it’s fair to say we’ve had a souvenir shop mentality, where we’ve just put the crest on a pencil case,” Radlinski says. “And there’s still a need for this. But what we do now will be much more cultural and lifestyle based, a different direction for us. I’m really looking forward to seeing how people will take that.(Well wait no more. I think you have your answer)


“The crest had 21,000 threads in it, and every time we embroidered it on something it cost us £3.20(a whole £3.20? On a £60 shirt?). You just couldn’t shrink it down and we can do so much more with the new one and be a lot more creative going forward.”

Radlinski admits there is a mixture of nervousness and excitement in taking the bold new vision to supporters, but believes there is another level to the move. At a time where uncertainty swirls menacingly around professional sport at most levels, the Warriors executive director believes this shows that Wigan are ready to emerge from the difficulties of 2020 into a brighter new future.

“Nobody envisaged this Covid situation but it’s probably a good time to come out the other side of it and launch this fresh, modern, young and exciting way forward for the club,” Radlinski adds. “Nobody would have wanted to go through what we have done this year, but we see this as a beacon of light (what the new badge? Seriously?)to emerge from the other side of it.


“Whereas perhaps people might have been more protective of the badge at the start of the year, a lot of people’s priorities have changed now, and this gives us an opportunity to say right(ah so you took the current situation as an opportunity to sneak it in, at least now you are being honest), we know what the old badge meant to us but this is the way forward for Wigan Warriors.

“Nervousness is a good word - I wouldn’t use the word fear - and there’s a lot of excitement as well. We’re only doing this to make us better. If anyone says they don’t like it that’s fine, that’s an opinion, we’ve no problem with that.(That's nice of you, to allow fans an opinion. I suspect you WILL have a problem when you sell very few shirts though?)

“But my message back to them is we’re trying to make the club better, do different things, make it bigger and give better offerings to our fans. It allows us to do so much more (what exactly? Give us an example).We’re coming out of the other side of Covid with this great hope that we can take the game forward. We’re not just surviving - this is us moving forward.”