St James' Park

[80]

No, the point is it was emblematic of the thinking that caused the decline of the club.

[80]

And I do think we can blame the decline of the club on it backing Shearer over Robson in their conflict...

[Kid Icarus]

39 minutes ago, 80 said:

The original is much better than his effort. Not that I want it changed in the slightest, but if I did, I'd go for a more radical redo than his thing.

 

I'm no expert in this stuff, but I don't understand why 'digital times' mean images need to be less detailed and more homogenous. And fuck it, if we're going to be the richest club in the world, presumably we can afford to stand out from the pack and develop imagery around aesthetic ideals and luxury, rather than being pushed around by marketing budgets and design graduates.

 

Re Shearer's, on one hand, I agree with @manorpark. Respect to the owners for trying to clean the club and restore it to better times. I think they're doing their best.

 

That said, I never thought Shearer's should've existed in the first place. It was a huge sign of the club going in the wrong direction fast at the time, with Freddie Shepherd clinging on to selling a fading cult of personality alongside Graeme Souness rather than developing the fundamentals of the club as Robson had wanted to.

 

It was the kind of thinking that brought us Michael Owen and proper football. In a roundabout way it was one of the things that set us up as marks for Mike Ashley to later target. December 2004. Bad memories.

 

 

 

Accessibility and readability are a fundamental part of good digital content design basically. If you create something that's either a visual mess or completely inaccessible or unreadable for any demographic then you're essentially excluding them from it.

 

Personally I think he's done a fantastic job there and essentially just cleaned the badge up without compromising the original design. The only real big change is the rope (I forget its proper name) being arched.

[80]

16 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

Accessibility and readability are a fundamental part of good digital content design basically. If you create something that's either a visual mess or completely inaccessible or unreadable for any demographic then you're essentially excluding them from it.

 

Personally I think he's done a fantastic job there and essentially just cleaned the badge up without compromising the original design. The only real big change is the rope (I forget its proper name) being arched.

 

Not being argumentative, I just genuinely don't get it. What is there that is hard to access on our current crest? If someone can't read 'Newcastle United' on the current crest, I'd say there's a 99% chance they can't read it on this guy's crest. And that's just a font, at the end of the day.

 

Did you think the crest was a visual mess when you were 14? Why did no one spot what a mess it was in 1992?

 

Why do all the lines need to share the same thickness and be less intricate? Who does that exclude? Again, I literally don't get it.

 

I don't outright hate what he's done, for what it's worth. But where you see clean, I see sterile. Same thing, different emphasis.

 

Previously, all the justifications I've heard for this have related to cost effectiveness of reproduction on marketing material, and ease of copywriting (yucky capitalism, Kid).

[Wandy]

1 hour ago, 80 said:

The original is much better than his effort. Not that I want it changed in the slightest, but if I did, I'd go for a more radical redo than his thing.

 

I'm no expert in this stuff, but I don't understand why 'digital times' mean images need to be less detailed and more homogenous. And fuck it, if we're going to be the richest club in the world, presumably we can afford to stand out from the pack and develop imagery around aesthetic ideals and luxury, rather than being pushed around by marketing budgets and design graduates.

 

Re Shearer's, on one hand, I agree with @manorpark. Respect to the owners for trying to clean the club and restore it to better times. I think they're doing their best.

 

That said, I never thought Shearer's should've existed in the first place. It was a huge sign of the club going in the wrong direction fast at the time, with Freddie Shepherd clinging on to selling a fading cult of personality alongside Graeme Souness rather than developing the fundamentals of the club as Robson had wanted to.

 

It was the kind of thinking that brought us Michael Owen and proper football. In a roundabout way it was one of the things that set us up as marks for Mike Ashley to later target. December 2004. Bad memories.

 

 

 

Couldn’t agree more. I have never been a fan of it being called Shearer’s and actually preferred it being called Nine Bar. It was one of the few things that Ashley did that I agreed with. I don’t think a player or manager should be celebrated in any part of a stadium with renaming etc until they have passed away, to be honest.

[Kid Icarus]

45 minutes ago, 80 said:

 

Not being argumentative, I just genuinely don't get it. What is there that is hard to access on our current crest? If someone can't read 'Newcastle United' on the current crest, I'd say there's a 99% chance they can't read it on this guy's crest. And that's just a font, at the end of the day.

 

Did you think the crest was a visual mess when you were 14? Why did no one spot what a mess it was in 1992?

 

Why do all the lines need to share the same thickness and be less intricate? Who does that exclude? Again, I literally don't get it.

 

I don't outright hate what he's done, for what it's worth. But where you see clean, I see sterile. Same thing, different emphasis.

 

Previously, all the justifications I've heard for this have related to cost effectiveness of reproduction on marketing material, and ease of copywriting (yucky capitalism, Kid).

 

I do it for a living, so I can explain a bit. The original design isn't really a clear example of something that's massively inaccessible tbh, but there are some issues that I can spot.

 

- there's a lack of clarity on the seahorse's faces and especially the lion's face

- the Newcastle United font is too small and has serifs (difficult to read for dyslexia)

- the top banner edging makes it very busy

 

In general though, examples of demographics that could be excluded with design choices are: 

- people who are blind* or have low vision

- people with varying types of colour blindness

- people with dyslexia

- people with autism

- people with physical or motor disabilities (not too relevant in this case)

 

* the more complex a design the more difficult it is to explain in the 'image alternative text' that screen readers use to describe images

 

It might seem a bit PC gone mad or whatever, but combined all of the demographics make up 20% of the population. So like 13 million people in the UK alone, not including people who may have temporary accessibility issues due to an injury or something, so it's a huge amount of people to be excluding.

 

In 1992 no one really had their eyes on any of this and the internet wasn't really a popular thing then.

 

I have no doubt that the driver for companies to adhere to all of this is their bottom line. Avoiding penalties, being able to simplify designs and reduce costs, more potential customers etc. The fact it's actually a net benefit for society is just a lucky byproduct.

 

 

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by Kid Icarus

[80]

23 minutes ago, Wandy said:

Couldn’t agree more. I have never been a fan of it being called Shearer’s and actually preferred it being called Nine Bar. It was one of the few things that Ashley did that I agreed with. I don’t think a player or manager should be celebrated in any part of a stadium with renaming etc until they have passed away, to be honest.

 

It really seemed like the club was going out of its way to diminish itself and turn itself into the Alan Shearer appreciation society at the time. He was a 34 year old current player, ffs. Him outscoring Millburn was seen as a more important target than qualifying for Europe. It was a psychodrama.

 

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by 80

[80]

9 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

 

I do it for a living, so I can explain a bit. The original design isn't really a clear example of something that's massively inaccessible tbh, but there are some issues that I can spot.

 

- there's a lack of clarity on the seahorse's faces and especially the lion's face

- the Newcastle United font is too small and has serifs (difficult to read for dyslexia)

- the top banner edging makes it very busy

 

In general though, examples of demographics that could be excluded with design choices are: 

- people who are blind* or have low vision

- people with varying types of colour blindness

- people with dyslexia

- people with autism

- people with physical or motor disabilities (not too relevant in this case)

 

* the more complex a design the more difficult it is to explain in the 'image alternative text' that screen readers use to describe images

 

It might seem a bit PC gone mad or whatever, but combined all of the demographics make up 20% of the population. So like 13 million people in the UK alone, not including people who may have temporary accessibility issues due to an injury or something, so it's a huge amount of people to be excluding.

 

In 1992 no one really had their eyes on any of this and the internet wasn't really a popular thing then.

 

I have no doubt that the driver for companies to adhere to all of this is their bottom line. Avoiding penalties, being able to simplify designs and reduce costs, more potential customers etc. The fact it's actually a net benefit for society is just a lucky byproduct.

 

 

 

 

 

Fair play for the proper response, I appreciate it.

 

Re the banner's top edging, I think that's one of the worst parts of his design. It looks like a Fisher Price reproduction.

 

I can negotiate the Newcastle font.

 

There is too much clarity on the new seahorse faces, the eyes are creepy. The originals represent a design effect rather than a lack of clarity, I would say.

 

The lion on the original is much smaller which explains the face, I don't mind the new lion design but it's outsized and unbalances the crest in my view.

 

With respect, I think the 20% and 13 million figures are sophistry in the extreme. I certainly don't accept that even a quarter of a million people will have their lives improved by his crest version replacing the current one. And on that basis, how many people with ASD will be distressed by changes to the aesthetics? I'm not even fully joking. Advocacy industry mathematics are usually riddled with deception, unfortunately.

 

I recall these were the same arguments given 10-20 years ago over why we should ditch our stripes, at least on the back of our shirts, in order to improve appearances and legibility for TV cameras etc. They were given short shrift at the time.

 

Rather than being a lucky by-product, I think it's more a case of bottom line chasers grasping at positive sounding arguments to justify their real motivations and not especially caring how true they are. A bit like trying to drive the removal of physical money due to it's cost of handling and untraceable nature and claiming it's to improve hygiene.

[Kid Icarus]

49 minutes ago, 80 said:

 

Fair play for the proper response, I appreciate it.

 

Re the banner's top edging, I think that's one of the worst parts of his design. It looks like a Fisher Price reproduction.

 

I can negotiate the Newcastle font.

 

There is too much clarity on the new seahorse faces, the eyes are creepy. The originals represent a design effect rather than a lack of clarity, I would say.

 

The lion on the original is much smaller which explains the face, I don't mind the new lion design but it's outsized and unbalances the crest in my view.

 

With respect, I think the 20% and 13 million figures are sophistry in the extreme. I certainly don't accept that even a quarter of a million people will have their lives improved by his crest version replacing the current one. And on that basis, how many people with ASD will be distressed by changes to the aesthetics? I'm not even fully joking. Advocacy industry mathematics are usually riddled with deception, unfortunately.

 

I recall these were the same arguments given 10-20 years ago over why we should ditch our stripes, at least on the back of our shirts, in order to improve appearances and legibility for TV cameras etc. They were given short shrift at the time.

 

Rather than being a lucky by-product, I think it's more a case of bottom line chasers grasping at positive sounding arguments to justify their real motivations and not especially caring how true they are. A bit like trying to drive the removal of physical money due to it's cost of handling and untraceable nature and claiming it's to improve hygiene.

 

Businesses wouldn't be adopting it out of the goodness of their hearts if there wasn't a profit motive, so in that sense it's sophistry.

 

However, the research is an aside from that. It's independent, peer reviewed, and has been going on for decades with the same findings. Companies citing or using that research to fill their pockets doesn't mean the research is wrong, they're not mutually exclusive.

 

Soon enough renewable energy will be genuinely profitable and businesses will be claiming they're selling it to save the planet. Just because they'll be lying about their motivations that doesn't mean renewable energy isn't still a good thing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by Kid Icarus

[80]

6 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

However, the research is an aside from that. It's independent, peer reviewed, and has been going on for decades with the same findings. Companies citing or using that research to fill their pockets doesn't mean the research is wrong, they're not mutually exclusive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agreed that they're not mutually exclusive, but the research itself is often driven by the need to be financially realisable and eye-catching enough to secure further funding.

 

Often times the key is in playing with the definitions of words to make a small disorder widely applicable, and in making poorly founded extrapolations of findings to large sections of society. E.g. 13 million Brits counting on us adjusting the drawing of a seahorse's eyes.

 

Anyway........ We're probably going to go severely off topic at this point...

[Guest HTT II]

I quite like that bloke’s attempt at a fresh up myself, subtle, but smart without taking away from the badge overall.

[HaydnNUFC]

I think it's looks shit tbh. Seems tightened together and more of something you'd see for a Hasbro version of our badge. Can we just leave stuff alone that isn't broke?

 

In terms of cleaning up the badge if someone absolutely had to, when you Google our crest you find these two designs which I vastly prefer to that guy's redesign.

 

Spoiler

 

[Kid Icarus]

It is a bit broken by today's standards. Neither of those designs fix the things that are broken.

 

I dunno, I can't wrap my head around thinking that what he's done can be all that bad when it's so close to the original anyway.

 

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by Kid Icarus

[Dr.Spaceman]

7 hours ago, HaydnNUFC said:

I think it's looks shit tbh. Seems tightened together and more of something you'd see for a Hasbro version of our badge. Can we just leave stuff alone that isn't broke?

 

In terms of cleaning up the badge if someone absolutely had to, when you Google our crest you find these two designs which I vastly prefer to that guy's redesign.

 

  Hide contents

 

 

Why is there a stormtrooper holding the flag on the top crest?

[Wallsendmag]

Our current club crest is perfect. One part of the club that definitely doesn't need changed.

[madras]

3 minutes ago, Wallsendmag said:

Our current club crest is perfect. One part of the club that definitely doesn't need changed.

Dunno like, it's all right but I've never been keen on the black and white shield bit, seems a bit lazy. Alway preferred the castles, history and all that.

[Wallsendmag]

4 minutes ago, madras said:

Dunno like, it's all right but I've never been keen on the black and white shield bit, seems a bit lazy. Alway preferred the castles, history and all that.

 

Always loved it. Can't think of a better one in the Premier League. Also believe it's now the longest standing club crest in the league.

[WarrenBartonCentrePartin]

17 hours ago, Kid Icarus said:

 

Get this man on the case.

 

 

 

The eyes

The tongue

Both together

[WarrenBartonCentrePartin]

Fucking Slutcastle Unislut

[Kanj]

10 hours ago, HaydnNUFC said:

I think it's looks shit tbh. Seems tightened together and more of something you'd see for a Hasbro version of our badge. Can we just leave stuff alone that isn't broke?

 

In terms of cleaning up the badge if someone absolutely had to, when you Google our crest you find these two designs which I vastly prefer to that guy's redesign.

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

It’s blatantly not shit and it’s done by an actual graphic design person who knows how things translate in different forms of media, chose a proper font, didn’t make any major wholesale changes. 

 

No our club crest is not broken, its far from it - but it’s been clearly brought forward and very intricate details have been lost. Which is why this lad on instagram tried to further emphasize. A smudged up face of a lion that I’m sure the original intent was not meant to be. There is a very clear line between holding on to tradition and cleaning up things that likely have been lost in the modernization and lack of continuity at our club. 

[Disco]

Making slight alterations just make it look DHgate as fuck. 

[HaydnNUFC]

2 hours ago, Kanji said:

 

 

It’s blatantly not shit and it’s done by an actual graphic design person who knows how things translate in different forms of media, chose a proper font, didn’t make any major wholesale changes. 

 

No our club crest is not broken, its far from it - but it’s been clearly brought forward and very intricate details have been lost. Which is why this lad on instagram tried to further emphasize. A smudged up face of a lion that I’m sure the original intent was not meant to be. There is a very clear line between holding on to tradition and cleaning up things that likely have been lost in the modernization and lack of continuity at our club. 

 

Change the lion then. The rest of it is fine.

[Kid Icarus]

It's the font and banner binding that would need to be changed more than anything else I think like. The lion can probably stay looking like it's in blackface, the seahorses faces can stay as a homage to Peter Beardsley, and the lines can stay looking like 1995 clipart and they'd only be obvious design failures rather than accessibility ones.

 

Considering it's just a clean up of the existing badge, and a really sensitively done one by a talented professional who also supports Newcastle, I can probably imagine the N-O reaction to any new and real badge designs.  

 

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by Kid Icarus

[bobloblaw]

22 hours ago, Kid Icarus said:

 

I do it for a living, so I can explain a bit. The original design isn't really a clear example of something that's massively inaccessible tbh, but there are some issues that I can spot.

 

- there's a lack of clarity on the seahorse's faces and especially the lion's face

- the Newcastle United font is too small and has serifs (difficult to read for dyslexia)

- the top banner edging makes it very busy

 

In general though, examples of demographics that could be excluded with design choices are: 

- people who are blind* or have low vision

- people with varying types of colour blindness

- people with dyslexia

- people with autism

- people with physical or motor disabilities (not too relevant in this case)

 

* the more complex a design the more difficult it is to explain in the 'image alternative text' that screen readers use to describe images

 

It might seem a bit PC gone mad or whatever, but combined all of the demographics make up 20% of the population. So like 13 million people in the UK alone, not including people who may have temporary accessibility issues due to an injury or something, so it's a huge amount of people to be excluding.

 

In 1992 no one really had their eyes on any of this and the internet wasn't really a popular thing then.

 

I have no doubt that the driver for companies to adhere to all of this is their bottom line. Avoiding penalties, being able to simplify designs and reduce costs, more potential customers etc. The fact it's actually a net benefit for society is just a lucky byproduct.

 

 

 

 

 

This really shouldn't be understated.  As someone who uses a LMS daily, making these accommodations for blind students (I've had at least one each of the last 3 years) can be very difficult.

 

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by bobloblaw

[NE27]

2 hours ago, Kid Icarus said:

It's the font and banner binding that would need to be changed more than anything else I think like. The lion can probably stay looking like it's in blackface, the seahorses faces can stay as a homage to Peter Beardsley, and the lines can stay looking like 1995 clipart and they'd only be obvious design failures rather than accessibility ones.

 

Considering it's just a clean up of the existing badge, and a really sensitively done one by a talented professional who also supports Newcastle, I can probably imagine the N-O reaction to any new and real badge designs.  

 

 

 

 

Unless it pays homage to leazes terrace, I will rightly be outraged.