Premier League 5 best crests Stories of how a logo can tell an entire community
Shiny blades and crossed hammers, red devils and saints, eagles flying over monumental crystal palaces and mythological creatures. What, at first, may sound like the promo for a new Game of Thrones season actually is the Premier League universe, the top league of English football.
Whereas in other European championships reign badges displaying clubs’ initials or rather accurate references to the cities’ coats of arms, Premier League’s crests simultaneously stand out as pioneering marketing intuitions and symbols conveying all the heritage of some of the oldest football clubs on earth. The crests bring our minds back to the manuscripts miniated, amidst the Medieval fog, on precious paper under the dim light of a candelabra in some Anglican abbey, and now conserved in the ancient libraries of those colleges whose playgrounds witnessed the birth of the beautiful game.
As if they had been conceived with the concept - first born in the ‘70s with the American NASL - of football as a commercial and entertainment product in mind, Premier League’s crests are ancient works of graphic design made when the concept of graphic design itself was from being coined. Take, for instance, the intuition to associate, within the crest of Liverpool FC, the Liver Bird – symbol of the city – with the Anfield front gate, therefore synthesizing in one badge the axis connecting the club’s origins with one of its iconic and well-identifiable landmarks.
Sheffield United
When writing about the origins of football, we can’t help but mention Sheffield, home - other than to Sheffield F.C., the world’s oldest football club - to the steel city derby between Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United. In Sheffield, the paradigm of those grey Northern England cities vibrating with working-class pride, to avoid a future spent in a steel factory, people either go for music - like successfully done by Pulp and Arctic Monkeys - or football. Sitting at the bottom of the table but leading it in matter of crest beauty, Sheffield United portrays on its badge the steel symbol of the city in the form of two crossed swords: the blades, memories of that Victorian England made of lords and corsairs.
