Modern Football Doesn’t Mean Better

For Fin Sutherns, football design was never simply about making things look good.

Growing up around Manchester United through his father, Sutherns became fascinated by everything surrounding the game: the identity of a club, its history, its supporters, and the way those elements combine to make people feel that they belong to something bigger than themselves.

That fascination eventually became the direction of his design career.

What interests Sutherns about football branding is not simply the visual challenge of designing a crest, a shirt or a wider identity. It is the responsibility that comes with designing something that can carry decades of memories, and potentially become part of the memories of generations still to come.

A club’s visual identity can carry decades of memories and emotion,” he explains. “I love the idea that something I create can become part of that story.

That philosophy sits at the centre of Sutherns’ work. And it also places him in an increasingly interesting position within contemporary football design: one where modernisation is not automatically considered progress.

The problem with making everything modern

Football clubs have changed dramatically as brands.

A crest that once needed to work primarily on a shirt, match programme or scarf now has to function across social media, websites, broadcast graphics, merchandise and tiny digital interfaces. In that environment, simplicity has obvious advantages.

Sutherns understands that.

Simpler identities are often more recognisable, more adaptable and easier to reproduce consistently. Clubs also increasingly think of themselves as commercial brands, making flexibility and contemporary presentation important considerations.

But that does not mean that simpler is necessarily better.

In fact, Sutherns believes some of the recent wave of football rebrands has confused modernisation with improvement.

There’s an element of laziness in some of the modern rebrands we’re seeing,” he says. “Simplifying a crest can be effective, but simply stripping away detail and calling it modernisation isn’t necessarily good design.

For him, the question should never be How can we make this crest look more modern?

It should be:

What makes this club unique, and how can we express that today without losing it?

That distinction is crucial.

A horse that is deeply embedded in a club’s identity, for example, does not necessarily need to be transformed into a geometric symbol simply because geometric symbols currently look contemporary. The way the horse moves, its character and the history attached to it should all influence the final design.

The same applies to typography, colour and the wider visual language. A typeface should not be chosen simply because it looks clean. It should feel appropriate to the personality and heritage of the club.

Modern design, in Sutherns’ view, should be an evolution of identity, not an attempt to erase everything that came before it.

A crest is not just a logo

This becomes particularly important when considering who actually owns a football club’s identity. Club, designer or supporters?

Ultimately it belongs to all three, but in very different ways. The club owns the identity in a legal and commercial sense, and the designer is responsible for creating and shaping it, but the supporters are the people who give it meaning.

Once a crest has been worn for decades, it becomes part of people’s lives. It’s on the shirts they grew up wearing, the programmes they kept, the memories of going to matches with their families. At that point, it becomes bigger than the piece of design itself.

That’s why I think designers have a responsibility to approach these projects with a huge amount of respect. We’re not designing in a vacuum; we’re contributing to something that existed before us and will hopefully exist long after us. You’re essentially borrowing a piece of a club’s identity for a moment, with the responsibility of leaving it in a better place for the next generation.

Eventually, it becomes bigger than the design itself.

That is why Sutherns believes designers have a responsibility that extends beyond aesthetics.

We’re not designing in a vacuum,” he says. “We’re contributing to something that existed before us and will hopefully exist long after us.

His description of the designer’s role is particularly revealing: you are effectively borrowing a piece of a club’s identity for a moment, with the responsibility of leaving it in a better place for the next generation.

That idea changes the entire philosophy of a rebrand.

The designer is no longer simply solving a visual problem.

They are intervening in collective memory.

Knowing when not to redesign

Sutherns’ work on Exeter City provides perhaps the clearest example of that philosophy.

The project marked the club’s 125th anniversary while also signalling the beginning of a new chapter under the strapline “Our City, Our Club, Our Way.” Given the difficult period the club had experienced, including a major financial crisis, the purpose was not to reinvent Exeter City.

It was to celebrate it.

The existing shield crest therefore remained at the centre of the design, with only minor refinements. Rather than replacing the club’s identity, Sutherns developed a wider system of supporting marks and graphic elements that could provide greater flexibility across different applications.

It was a solution to a modern branding problem without requiring the destruction of the old identity.

There were moments when he could have pushed the design much further.

He deliberately chose not to.

This wasn’t an opportunity to redesign Exeter City’s identity; it was an opportunity to celebrate it.

That restraint may be one of the hardest skills for a designer to develop.

There is always something else that can be changed. Another detail to refine. Another contemporary element to introduce.

But sometimes the strongest creative decision is to stop.

With Exeter, the discipline was in knowing what not to change.

The supporter-owned nature of the club reinforced that responsibility. Sutherns wanted the result to feel like an extension of the supporters’ identity rather than something imposed upon them.

In other words, the project was not about showing what the designer could do. It was about understanding what the club needed.

Starting from nothing

That philosophy becomes even more interesting when compared with Sutherns’ work for Poole FC.

Unlike an established club with decades of visual history, a new club does not have an existing identity that needs to be protected. It has to be created. But Sutherns does not see a blank canvas as an excuse to design something based purely on personal taste. 

Research comes first. He looks into the history of the place, its architecture, local symbols and culture, while also speaking directly with the people behind the club.

The goal is to create an identity that feels as though it could belong only to that club. Not something that simply looks like a football club. That distinction matters because a new crest is not only representing the present. It could become the visual symbol that future generations associate with the club.

When there is no history to preserve, the designer is effectively helping to create the history that will one day need preserving.

The digital trap

The digitalisation of football has made this conversation even more complicated.

A crest now has to work at 40 pixels on a phone screen. It needs to survive animation, broadcast graphics, websites and social media. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. The danger comes when technical flexibility becomes the primary reason for changing the identity.

Sutherns believes this is one of the reasons football branding has become increasingly homogenised.

Clubs simplify because simplified identities are easier to use. But an identity that is easier to use is not necessarily an identity that is more meaningful.

His solution is not to ignore the digital world, but to stop allowing it to dictate the primary identity. A detailed, characterful crest can coexist with simplified supporting marks, typography, patterns and graphic devices designed for smaller or more functional applications. The crest does not have to do everything.

And perhaps that is one of the fundamental mistakes of contemporary football branding: expecting one simplified symbol to perform every possible function.

Why old crests can feel better

There is another reason Sutherns is cautious about judging traditional crests by contemporary design standards. Emotion cannot simply be designed into a logo. It accumulates.

Traditional crests have survived promotions, relegations, cup runs, heartbreak and celebrations. Supporters have attached their own memories to them over generations. That emotional weight comes from everything that happened around the crest.

A modern identity can be technically brilliant and beautifully crafted, but it cannot manufacture decades of history overnight. This is also why Sutherns refuses to dismiss the imperfections of older football crests.

Something may not be perfectly constructed. It may not follow contemporary principles of simplicity or scalability. But those imperfections can become part of its character.

Sometimes what makes a crest feel less “perfect” is exactly what makes it feel human.

And if supporters love a crest emotionally while disliking aspects of its visual execution, Sutherns would rather preserve that emotional connection than create something technically superior that leaves people feeling nothing.

i’d always rather preserve something with genuine character than create something technically ‘better’ that people feel nothing for.

The future may be less uniform

Looking ahead, Sutherns believes football clubs face a significant danger: designing for the present rather than for the next generation.

Trends move quickly. Football identities are supposed to last for generations. If clubs continue chasing whatever currently looks contemporary, there is a risk that their identities become interchangeable.

He also expects AI and increasingly accessible design tools to make it easier to produce work that looks polished without necessarily having much thought or meaning behind it. Technology will continue to improve. But research, understanding and creative judgement will remain essential.

Because, ultimately, football clubs are not simply brands. They are institutions. They contain histories, communities and generations of supporters. And Sutherns believes the next generation of football identities has an opportunity to recognise that more confidently.

Rather than continuing towards the same combination of flat crests, geometric symbols and clean sans-serif typography, he would like to see clubs embrace what makes them different. More distinctive typography. More interesting illustration. Richer visual systems.

Heritage used in genuinely contemporary ways rather than simply reproduced.

Most importantly, individuality.

Modern football identities don’t all need to look modern in the same way,” Sutherns says.

The future of football branding, then, may not be about making every club look like the future. It may be about giving every club a better way of looking like itself.

Before changing a single line

That brings Sutherns back to the starting point of any rebrand.

Before changing the shape, colours or typeface, challenge the brief itself.

There’s often a temptation to start with the visual - the shape, the colours, the typeface - but I think the bigger opportunity is to question the thinking behind the identity. A rebrand is a huge moment for a football club, and it shouldn’t be treated as a cosmetic exercise.

Most importantly, don’t be afraid to make decisions that might not be the obvious ones. If the right answer is a completely new identity, do it properly. If the right answer is barely changing the crest at all, have the confidence to do that too. Good branding isn’t about the scale of the change; it’s about whether the change is actually justified.

Why is the rebrand happening? What problem is the club actually trying to solve? And does changing the crest genuinely solve it? A rebrand should not be a cosmetic exercise.

Sometimes the right answer is a completely new identity. Sometimes the right answer is barely changing the crest at all. The scale of the change is not what determines whether the work is successful. The justification does.

For Sutherns, perhaps the most important thing a football club can do before redesigning its identity is simply to ask whether it really needs to.

Because in an era when football clubs are increasingly being told to become cleaner, simpler, more flexible and more commercially effective, there is something almost radical about suggesting that the most progressive decision might sometimes be to leave the past alone.

Not because football should resist change. But because not everything that can be changed needs to be changed.

We’d like to thank Finley for taking the time to speak with us and for sharing his thoughts, experience and perspective on the future of football design.

We wish him continued success in his work and look forward to seeing where his creative journey takes him next. If you’d like to explore more of Finley’s work, you can visit his website https://www.finsuthernsdesign.com/.