Northampton Saints have today revealed the Club’s new crest following months of research, engagement with supporters, and careful design work.
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In a statement: “Produced in consultation with Jard Studio, the Club have drawn inspiration from our history in producing the new crest, going right back to our inception in 1880 and integrating the first emblem ever seen on a Saints kit within the new design.
“Over the past 12 months, the Club undertook important research including supporter surveys, engagement on matchdays, and analysis of engagement levels across the game to establish whether our current visual identity was suitable for a modern, professional sports organisation with high ambitions for the future.
“Our research gave us some food for thought, indicating that our existing crest presented several significant challenges:”
- DIFFICULT TO RECALL – even our most dedicated supporters could not remember key elements of a complicated and cluttered design.
- DOES NOT SHOWCASE SAINTS’ CORE COLOURS – three-quarters of our supporters told us that Black, Green and Gold is the most important part of the Club’s overall identity, yet these weren’t represented within our existing crest.
- HERITAGE – existing crest was only included on Saints’ playing kit since 1984, having been designed in the 1950s without any reference to the unique history of the Club itself, but rather as an adaptation of the Northampton coat of arms.
- AWARENESS – research indicates that awareness of Saints relative to other rugby clubs is low, with our existing visual identity not helping this.
- SCALE – in the modern age the Club’s crest will be seen online, digitally and on TV more than anywhere else. Indeed over 80% of visitors to northamptonsaints.co.uk and 98% of users of the Club’s social media channels come from mobile devices. There is a need to make Club branding clearer and more legible in increasingly smaller spaces, but our existing version was almost impossible to scale, with all detail lost as you reduced its size.