COLOURS AND THE CREST
Why black and yellow?
When setting up this group, overall brand image was a talking point and colour scheme options were considered. All of those involved in the discussions were/are fed up with the club ignoring much-loved traditions and subjecting us to white kits, blue kits, overdoing the redcurrant (wasn't it for one season only?!), more recently putting us in a horrid purple and black kit, and generally going with whatever Nike tell us to go with.
We're all firm believers that our home colours are red and white, and that we should wear yellow and blue when playing away. It's the away colour most associated with success at Arsenal, and the colour used most often for our away strip. Images of Charlie George in 71, Alan Sunderland in 79, Mickey Thomas "charging through the midfield" and so on. Therefore the famous golden looking Arsenal yellow was chosen, because it's the one our marketing and commercial people seem ever so eager to get away from. They might not love it, but we do.
Complementing the yellow? Black. This came from a suggestion that it complements the yellow but mainly was one of the only colours Nike hadn't managed to force upon us. Funnily enough since then, the club have brought out merchandise in this exact colour scheme.
BSM? Black scarves?
When starting the group and having decided the colour scheme, we had requests for merchandise... fans wanted visual identifiers to show they were part of the group. Due to cold weather at that time, we agreed to produce some scarves in our colours and with our crest. These were the first items which identified supporters of our supporters' group, and as word spread we became known as the Black Scarf Movement, or the BSM. The scarves were simply produced as a way of fans keeping warm and showing support for us but that quickly became a key identifier.
What's the crest about?
Well, any Arsenal fan who knows his/her stuff will know that the latest club crest caused a lot of controversy when it was forced upon us. Images of the new crest were paraded around Highbury before our game with Southampton in February 2002, to loud booing as well as chants of "What a load of rubbish" and "What the f**king hell is that?". However, the Board were still inside munching on their smoked salmon canapes so wouldn't have heard the very vocal response. They did later state that they'd liaised with a supporters group in the design stages, however to this day nobody knows who was on that supposed panel.
The new crest had ditched the club's motto 'Victoria Concordia Crescit' and indeed the design agency who created the new crest said "'We had to ensure every element of the badge was unique to Arsenal. For example, we removed a town crest allied to Islington and some irrelevant Latin text". Irrelevant?! What a disgraceful thing to say.
By far the biggest crime according to most fans was turning the cannon round and facing it the other way. To the vast majority of proud Arsenal supporters this was unforgivable... it was like tearing down Big Ben and replacing it with an upside-down version. It was like reversing the colours of the Union Jack. It was something we felt should be untouchable.
So when setting up this group and where we felt a logo/crest was necessary, there was one thing definite - that the cannon would face the same way as it had in our much loved traditional club crest. We incorporated a hexagonal border design in a nod to the classic 30s Arsenal crest, and for those who remember our shirts in the 1970s, we once again have AFC contained within three cannonballs.
When setting up this group, overall brand image was a talking point and colour scheme options were considered. All of those involved in the discussions were/are fed up with the club ignoring much-loved traditions and subjecting us to white kits, blue kits, overdoing the redcurrant (wasn't it for one season only?!), more recently putting us in a horrid purple and black kit, and generally going with whatever Nike tell us to go with.
We're all firm believers that our home colours are red and white, and that we should wear yellow and blue when playing away. It's the away colour most associated with success at Arsenal, and the colour used most often for our away strip. Images of Charlie George in 71, Alan Sunderland in 79, Mickey Thomas "charging through the midfield" and so on. Therefore the famous golden looking Arsenal yellow was chosen, because it's the one our marketing and commercial people seem ever so eager to get away from. They might not love it, but we do.
Complementing the yellow? Black. This came from a suggestion that it complements the yellow but mainly was one of the only colours Nike hadn't managed to force upon us. Funnily enough since then, the club have brought out merchandise in this exact colour scheme.
BSM? Black scarves?
When starting the group and having decided the colour scheme, we had requests for merchandise... fans wanted visual identifiers to show they were part of the group. Due to cold weather at that time, we agreed to produce some scarves in our colours and with our crest. These were the first items which identified supporters of our supporters' group, and as word spread we became known as the Black Scarf Movement, or the BSM. The scarves were simply produced as a way of fans keeping warm and showing support for us but that quickly became a key identifier.
What's the crest about?
Well, any Arsenal fan who knows his/her stuff will know that the latest club crest caused a lot of controversy when it was forced upon us. Images of the new crest were paraded around Highbury before our game with Southampton in February 2002, to loud booing as well as chants of "What a load of rubbish" and "What the f**king hell is that?". However, the Board were still inside munching on their smoked salmon canapes so wouldn't have heard the very vocal response. They did later state that they'd liaised with a supporters group in the design stages, however to this day nobody knows who was on that supposed panel.
The new crest had ditched the club's motto 'Victoria Concordia Crescit' and indeed the design agency who created the new crest said "'We had to ensure every element of the badge was unique to Arsenal. For example, we removed a town crest allied to Islington and some irrelevant Latin text". Irrelevant?! What a disgraceful thing to say.
By far the biggest crime according to most fans was turning the cannon round and facing it the other way. To the vast majority of proud Arsenal supporters this was unforgivable... it was like tearing down Big Ben and replacing it with an upside-down version. It was like reversing the colours of the Union Jack. It was something we felt should be untouchable.
So when setting up this group and where we felt a logo/crest was necessary, there was one thing definite - that the cannon would face the same way as it had in our much loved traditional club crest. We incorporated a hexagonal border design in a nod to the classic 30s Arsenal crest, and for those who remember our shirts in the 1970s, we once again have AFC contained within three cannonballs.
