Last night my beloved Warrington Wolves had a “brand refresh”. We launched a new club logo which was accompanied by a media campaign entitled #hardwired. The campaign focuses on fundamental changes that will be happening at the club going forwards, including a new-look website and a brand new membership scheme. Let’s have a look at the logo.

At this point I should add that I’m a Web Developer who works in a marketing environment so I feel I’m qualified to give my opinion on the following…

Firstly I looked at who did this work. In the footer it says “Design & Development by The One Point“, so I’m presuming them. One look at that site does not give me any reassurance, the one point I take away is that it looks shit.
I think they might have changed agencies as I remember speaking to someone on Twitter who had produced some good online work for the club (could be related to the testimonials though). Without knowing their budget it’s hard for me to judge but first impressions of the design work of that agency is not good (if they didn’t do the branding then apologies, but I would certainly look for someone else to do the website design!).

The logo is very different from the traditional badges people are used to so it’s always going to cause uproar with Joe Public. However it’s modern and using solid, bright colours with nice smooth lines. I admire the fact that they’re tried to push the boundaries with it, however that doesn’t mean I like the logo.

The wolf is my favorite part of the logo, I think that’s excellent. However in my opinion (IMO) the rest leaves a lot to be desired.

The typography is not good. We have the chunky fonts on the top which wouldn’t look out of place on a kids poster. The font looks a bit childish perhaps for a family fun day, it’s certainly not very asserting IMO. The “wolves” bit seems of out position and not curved enough in that grey bit (why choose that colour?).
Moving to the bottom they’ve gone for a slab font which I personally think makes the two poorly chosen fonts look awkward together. IMO the worst part of the logo is that dreadful ribbon, like a complete afterthought. I wonder if they just bought a stock image and stuck it on?

I like the idea of the 7 badges in the background, however lets be honest those three lines look nothing like wire and very much like a lightning bolt. After looking several times I’m now struggling to get this out of my head.

Why they’ve moved from the traditional primrose and blue I’m not sure? What’s with the grey and different shades of blue? Unsure how this will work with the new shirts and traditional club colours (since they’re banging on about traditions)?

On the plus side the wolf is excellent, the curves are good and the logo is modern looking. I just wish they would have sorted the actual badge and fonts out too.

Moving onto some other thoughts…

Why on earth do you do a brand-relaunch halfway through a season? My shirt – and the tens of thousands of others – now has an outdated badge on? One of the to say this will be “going forwards more next season” (absolutely no mention of this on the website) , so what’s the point in doing it now then? I very much doubt it’s marketing ploy to sell another load of shirts, I also doubt the players will wear this badge this season. So what’s the point of having it plastered all over the website and marketing stuff now?

I’m very impressed that Warrington have embarked on a project to find out what the fans what. An overwhelming concern was that “the club has no brand” and I’m very impressed that they stepped up to resolve this. However, I think they’ve gone about it the wrong way. If they really wanted to consider the fans opinions then why not show the fans the logo concepts, and ask them which direction they like best, instead of just plonking this upon us? I’ve worked along some very talented branding people and I understand that the process can take months and head in lots of directions. If this is the best concept they came up with I would love to see the others!

At the end of the day it’s Warrington’s logo and therefore it’s now my logo. Their branding isn’t going to change the way I feel about the club, I just feel it could all have been done much, much better.

WIRES

P.S if anyone from Warrington reads this another good way in which you could improve the fans experience/customer service is to answer questions (this is one example but it has happened dozens of times).

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