The new A-Leagues logo: Inclusive symbolism or a waste of money?

The promise of real change in Australian football came with the formation of the Australian Professional Leagues and yesterday saw perhaps its most significant move to date, with the release of new branding for itself and the top tiers of football.

In essence, the jettisoning of gender- and age-specific descriptors as prefixes to the elite level competition names will see all three now fall under the common banner of the A-Leagues.

No doubt, we will all spend a short period becoming comfortable using the new titles, A-League men, A-League women and A-League youth, and there may be a few slip-ups along the way as fans and commentators all become accustomed to the change. However, as a potentially long term unifying and streamlining decision, its clear merit can be seen.

The A-Leagues’ revamped social media channels will soon feature content from all three competitions, with the intention being to disseminate relevant information to football fans as a whole and not just a specific league and the prospect of an all-encompassing website that would effectively become a one stop shop for fans is indeed an attractive one.

Along with the changes in wording came a snazzy new logo that catches the eye with its colour and form. As with most developed for businesses looking to visually reflect their essence and fabric to existing and potential customers, there is something understated and simple about the final product.

At first glance, it is obvious that the letter A was a not negotiable element for the designers and the small sphere in the bottom left corner clearly references the game itself. Together, they successfully convey a simplistic and fundamental vision for the future of football in Australia.

The more one looks at it, the cleverer it appears to become. I scribbled down my first thoughts and kept refining and reshaping them as other ideas came to mind. I ended up with a very blunt and simple idea at the end of the process; we are Australia and these are our football leagues.

I kind of like that and reading A-Leagues Managing Director Danny Townsend’s explanation, “It’s not men’s football, or women’s football, it’s just football,” everything appeared to make sense.

Later in the day, social media came to life with a host of clever individuals providing their own interpretations of the new visual. One version consisted of a rotated image of Frank Lowy’s fall from the 2015 grand final podium with the ball represented by the colloquially known toilet seat.

Slightly more obscure was another, where Robbie Slater’s famous physical explanation of exactly when a football is totally across the goal-line and a goal should subsequently be awarded, was somehow morphed into the general shape of the new logo.

Some people have far too much time on their hands, yet it was all rather funny.

Less so was the brisk discovery of a South Australian based business named Adelaide Building Consulting. Aside from the colours, differences between its logo and the salmon and blue A-Leagues version appear non existent.

This raises a few pertinent questions.

Firstly, does it really matter? Probably not. Were A-Leagues aware that the logo they had prepared diligently to announce was in fact far from original? Only they know. And thirdly, if the new newly named body had remained unaware of the similarities until after the launch, were they then quite peeved with the work completed by its creators?

It is all terrific promotion for Adelaide Building Consulting and if I’m ever planning on settling in South Australia they will be the first people I call. However, wondering whether there were any feelings of embarrassment at headquarters after the announcement kept me up most of the night.

Personally, I would find it difficult to launch new business branding knowing full well that there was something frightfully similar already in existence.

However, none of that is relevant to the exciting and ground-breaking ambition that the branding represents; one that elevates the men’s and women’s competitions onto the same platform and one that looks well into the future of the Australian game and the potential end result of the continued growth on the women’s side.

Many other countries will follow suit and we should all be proud that A-Leagues has led the way in seeing where the game could potentially take us over the next 50 years.

For Australian football, the new branding is just one of many aspects in what is an incredibly exciting time and it has absolutely nothing to do with building consultancy.