When Sir Alex Ferguson, arguably one of the best sports managers ever, retired from his coaching job at Manchester United in 2013, many viewed this as marking a transition into a new era. We decided that updating Manchester United logo could be a key step to take the club into the 21st century and so we put the challenge to our designers and launched an (unofficial) Manchester United Logo Contest.

We asked designers to submit a design to the logo competition that either iterated on the current logo or departed from the design entirely.

Designers then tweeted @designcrowd and shared their design on DesigCrowd's Facebook page with the link to their submission and included the hashtags #ThankYouSirAlex, which for a while was the the top trending keyword on Twitter and #mufc (for the football club). Designs had to include the words "Manchester United" and stay in line with the brand colors - yellow, red, black, and white.

We invited the editor of Love Football Hate Football, Saurabh, aka @lovehateftbl to judge the contest. He's a mad-keen football fan, professional graphic designer, and regular contributor to the popular premier football design site Design Football.

The official Manchester United logo.





The contest received 146 submissions and @loveftblhateftbl was asked to shortlist the best designs before selecting the winner. But it wasn't just the DesignCrowd community that was interested in the contest, @lovehateftbl blogged about the contest, Media and Marketing website The Drum covered the launch and winners announcement, plus a slew of football sites including Eye Football. Check out the winners and our other favorite submissions below to see just how much talent is here at Design Crowd!

2nd Place | £150

Best of the Rest / Top 14!

Cláudio Cruz - Portugal

Designer comment : [Linked to Design #1900553] Some different logo

applications, with a red background, as used in a Manchester United shirt,

and also an embroidery application...





MacMotion - United Kingdom





Designer comment : It's a pretty standard design and not very different

from the original but it is just a revamp of the original logo before

the Red Devil.



B - Croatia



Designer comment : The Manchester United logo is one of soccer's most

recognised logos, therefore, I tried to keep most components similar. Perhaps fans

do not really want a totally new logo, so instead I have just modified and created

an 'upgraded' one.



Changes:

- banners and detailing (at top and bottom)

- changes to the ship

- changed the balls to the soccer ball design - devil's eyes.





Were any of the above your favorite? Do you agree with our choice of winners? Let us know in the comments below. And be sure to leave us a link as well if your favorite submission is not found in the list above.

Do you need a football logo? Check out our football club logo maker and soccer club logo maker.

Special thanks again to our guest judge @loveftblhateftbl

Jo Sabin is Head of Designer Community at DesignCrowd. She's led the company's public relations and social media programs since 2012. With more than ten years' experience working with Australian and international tech startups in the creative industries, Jo has been instrumental in meeting DesignCrowd's objectives in Australia and abroad. Get in touch via Twitter.