New badges – a sad trend that distances football from its historical roots, or a necessary exercise for all forward-thinking modern clubs?

The summer saw three Football League teams ditch their old club crests in favour of flashy new ones. Cheltenham Town swapped their old heraldic crest for one depicting a graphical robin:

Cheltenham - goodbye 'Health and Knowledge', hello 'flying upwards and moving forward'.

"This was our most contemporary idea. We wanted one that represented the optimism of the club," said Guy Douglas from the badge designers flb. "In the annals of history, most of the robins have been still, waiting. This is flying upwards and moving forward. We hope it's a catalyst."

Chesterfield meanwhile matched the club's move to the new b2net stadium with a change of style:

Chesterfield - goodbye old-fashioned circle, hello vaguely MLS-esque spire-themed effort.

According to the club the new badge "retains the heritage of the football club by continuing to incorporate heraldic interlinked lettering set in a shield, which was originally displayed on the player's shirts in 1945".

And Morecambe scrapped their old design, complete with "Beauty Surrounds, Health Abounds" motto, for a bolder take on the club's nickname:

Morecambe - goodbye heraldry, hello shrimp.



"In the end they [the club's board] went for designer, Robin Zahler's very simple, clean shrimp crest," said designers Fat Creative, "one we all loved as it looks so bold and immediately identifiable and works on team shirts as well as across a range of the club's products."

Club crests have never been a static part of football – Morecambe, for example, have previously featured shrimps on their badge, before adopting the ship-and-red-rose design the best part of 20 years ago. Indeed the evolution of badges is, to those of us that way inclined, rather fascinating (a quick search brought up badge histories for Chelsea, Arsenal, Leeds and Oxford). The fear is that all those wonderful and varied badges may begin to become homogenised, losing their individuality and becoming shield-shaped disconnected brand logos that look nice on a pencil case or official £7.99 oversized mug but say nothing about a club's heritage. The bold graphical approach does seem to be the style of the time.

So new badges for Morecambe, Chesterfield and Cheltenham – a sad trend that distances football from its historical roots, or a necessary exercise for all forward-thinking modern clubs?