Corporate branding logic is taking the soul out of football clubs

For most football-mad kids, their first awareness of a 'brand' is the same: their football club. It's a cliche, but most spent hours perfecting the ability to draw their club's crest onto any available surface: school books, homework, birthday cards, icing on cupcakes.

For me, that was trickier than some. As a Newcastle United fan, our badge was more complicated than most.

It's irregular and imperfect, it has lots of unnecessary detail, it's difficult to draw, it's difficult to explain (what the hell is a Hippocampus?), it's traditional, it's historic, it's a little bit messy. But that was exactly what made it great.

So when Newcastle United announced its rebrand with an. When the topic of branding in football comes up, it's tempting to jump straight to the disasters: Leeds United'sinfamous 'salute' crest, seemingly lifted from a budget football management game, or Cardiff City'sill-advised switchfrom blue to red in pursuit of new markets.

But while examples like those serve as cautionary tales of just how badly a club can get things wrong, this piece is not about that type of headline-grabbing PR disaster. Instead, I'm more interested in the smaller, seemingly harmless changes.

The little tweaks, the smoothing of an identity's edges, the gradual loss of the quirks and imperfections that made it distinctive in the first place. Which brings me to Newcastle's update, which included an.

Some of the detail had gone. Many of the eccentricities and irregularities had been tidied up.

Everything was cleaner, smoother, easier to reproduce and altogether a little more sensible. All the things you're generally supposed to applaud in a modern rebrand, and yet somehow I couldn't help feeling like I preferred things when they were a little less 'perfect'.

Football fans, never exactly a shy bunch when it comes to sharing their opinions, were quick to weigh in. Much of the positive reaction seemed to centre on the fact that, at first glance, it didn't looktoodifferent from the original (if you squinted).