The 1970s are lumbered with a reputation as the decade style forgot. As with most nuggets of received wisdom, there’s a kernel of truth there: bell‑bottom trousers, nylon y-fronts, brown‑and‑orange geometric wallpaper guaranteed to induce cluster headaches from 100 yards.

But there’s also plenty to counterbalance the claim. The glam grooves of Bolan, Bowie and Roxy; the brutal beauty of the Barbican; CBGBs and Studio 54; hotpants; the Atari 2600 with its teak veneer. Yes, even the video-game consoles had tasteful Scandi-style wood panelling. The decade style forgot, apparently. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

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The 70s were always about the shock of the new. Somewhat surprisingly British football – not usually a school of progressive thought – embraced the zeitgeist with wholehearted zeal. Makeover fever gripped the sport as traditional crests, old-school coats-of-arms and baroque municipal insignia were swept aside by the abstract forces of modernity. Yes logo!

Derby County were one of the first clubs to embrace the new wave. For the best part of half a century, their stuffy crest framed a poor old ram with a look of pure misery on his mutton chops, his horn so fussily rendered it appeared to have a serious fungal infection. But in 1971 the club replaced him with a seminal line-drawing of a ram head down, preparing to charge. Within a year, Derby had won their first league title. Coincidence?

Perhaps. Then again, consider Nottingham Forest, who in the late 60s traded under a bespoke version of the city’s coat of arms, featuring a pair of rampant stags shifting a massive plaque in the removal-man style. Perfect subject matter for a two-reel comedy short – our heroes attempt to transport the cumbersome item over to Meadow Lane just as a Ford Model T heaves into view – but not something that lends itself to instant brand recognition.

The two stags – in our movie, they wear bowler hats and brown dustcoats – were retired in 1974 in favour of three simple squiggly lines, all that was required to conjure up an idyllic scene of a tricky tree by the Trent. Forest’s crisp new badge would soon be seared on the continental consciousness from Merseyside to Malmö, one of the great late-70s icons.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Nottingham Forest team with the European Cup after their 1-0 victory over Malmo in the European Cup Final at the Olympic Stadium in Munich in May 1979. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Getty Images

Or take the case of Aberdeen, who in 1979 stitched a stylised AFC on to their shirt, with the A representing a goal with a ball whistling into it. They kept faith with that until 1986, when the emblem was subsumed into a more traditional – and less impactful – roundel. In between times, the Dons won three league titles, four Scottish Cups, and defeated Real Madrid in a European final. Since the introduction of the more garden-variety insignia? Not so much.

It’s possible that the arrival and departure of Alex Ferguson might have had some bearing on events; that similarly applies to Brian Clough at Derby and Forest. Still, it is difficult to resist the idea of these bold new looks as a signifier of something bigger: the clubs willing to push the envelope with their identities were also willing to roll the dice by making risky managerial appointments, entertaining new ideas, embracing the future. It’s a frontier mindset.

Not that it always paid off. Blackpool unveiled a brave new corporate identity in 1979, replacing the seaside resort’s coat of arms – as worn by Stanley Matthews in 1953 – with an upward arrow representing the Blackpool Tower. It certainly did not represent Blackpool’s direction of travel; they had just dropped into the Third Division for the first time and were soon heading for the Fourth.

Fellow mod revivalists Swindon Town introduced a go-getting monogrammed logo in 1972, one arrow pointing left from the S, another heading right from the T. It wouldn’t have looked out of place on the label of a northern-soul deep cut. So did Swindon subsequently play with a dip in their hip and a glide in their stride? Sadly, here too the arrows misdirected the traffic, with Town headed down to the Third and Fourth Divisions. And you thought the sign approaching the Magic Roundabout was confusing.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aberdeen’s Mark McGhee, Swindon Town manager Dave Mackay and Blackpool’s Alan Ball sporting their club’s funky badge designs. Composite: Colorsport/Rex/Shutterstock; PA

There were great abstractions in the industrial north: the glorious Sheffield Wednesday owl, introduced in 1973, and the famous smiley LU badge minted in the same year by Leeds. Meanwhile in the midlands, West Brom unveiled a clever lower-case A that formed a throstle in a birdcage; a silhouette of a titular wolf leapt over piled-up Ws at Molineux; Birmingham ditched their city crest and went big on balancing balls.

Clubs eventually lost their nerve. Modernity fell out of fashion. Faux‑heraldic crests became the norm, a rococo revival of overly intricate signifiers impenetrable to anyone outside the city limits. Of the genre, Newcastle’s sea-horses perhaps stand out, kind of, though the effect isn’t half as aesthetically satisfying as the silver LU-inspired NUFC device Gazza used to wear. As for the smiley itself, Leeds bottled it in increments: arguably the most iconic symbol of all was smothered by a roundel, replaced by a fussy peacock, then a white Yorkshire rose, and finally a distended crest containing three separate ideas, none of them executed satisfactorily.

But fashion always comes back around, and simple, stark, intelligent designs are in vogue again: Juve’s modernist J; Tottenham’s glory-glory cockerel; Huddersfield’s not-afraid-to-come-at-you Yorkshire Terrier. With clubs the world over competing for attention in cyberspace, expect more and more to refer back to the stylish, forward-thinking 70s for that killer logo which will give their brand (yes I know) half a chance tomorrow.