Well after I embarrassed myself on Twitter by confusing a moose with a stag, I decided I'd figure out just what Watford Football Club's logo means. RATING: 5/10

The Premier League is back! I have been anxiously waiting for this season to begin. First game up was the thrilling match between Arsenal and Leicester City, with Arsenal pulling away with the first win of the season. Then Saturday morning madness began with Liverpool and Watford.

While enjoying the match, I was on Twitter thinking about reviewing Watford's logo. Since I was confused about the stag on the badge as a moose, I figured I should probably do some research.

RATING SYSTEM

ORIGINALITY 7
CREATIVITY 3
COLOR SCHEME 5
OVERALL 5/10

Unfortunately, the club history page is under construction and so it was a little bit harder to find the details of Watford's badge. After doing some digging I came across some very interesting facts. For instance, when the team was first founded in 1881, over 100 years ago, the team was actually called Watford Rovers. During their rise through the football ranks in England, their team colors and crest changed quite often. Even their name has changed over time, in 1893, after a couple years of internal conflict regarding the club name, it was changed from Watford Rovers to West Herts. It wasn't until 1898 that the name was changed one last time to Watford when rival club Watford St Mary's folded.

From 1927 until about 1959 their colors were blue and white, then in 1959/1960 they changed to a black and gold color scheme. Following a popular vote by the supporters clubs, the team's nickname was now The Hornets taken after their black and gold kits. It wasn't until 1976, that the gold was changed to yellow and red was introduced to the color scheme. Check out their whole history of kits here. I would rather the color scheme didn't include red, but they do a good job using it as an accent color.

The logo at one point included a hornet, however, in 1978 it was replaced by a hart/stag, which is a male deer. Reason being, Watford is located in Hertfordshire, England, an area abundant with deer. Lame, I know, I wish they would have stayed with the hornet. For one, they are nicknamed the hornets, by their supporters groups, because they're uniforms and club colors were black and gold. They have the nickname, the support, the uniforms and the colors in their crest, why not adopt it? Granted a complete re-brand would be costly but I think the change would make a lot more sense. Change their kit sponsor too and I mean the marketing campaign practically writes itself, In order to find our identity we had to go back to our roots, or some crap like that.

The reason I give it a 7 for originality is mainly for the shape of the shield. We don't see any other team in the Premier League using this unique shape. For the most part, all new badge logos coming out are either ones that already exist or are slightly modified. For instance, I thought Tottenham Hotspur's badge was new, but nope, they used it back in 1951-1967.

As for creativity, it just seems a bit flat to me, not in terms of depth. In a sense that the stag doesn't evoke any emotion from me. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be mean and aggressive, or it's just some lazy deer hanging out in the middle of the nowhere. It would make sense if Watford was known throughout the world as the largest population of deer, but it isn't. And so we are stuck with a simple graphic of a moose-stag, whatever.

I would love to see them do something with the hornet logo they donned back in 1972.

Obviously I mean a version of the 1972 logo, not the exact hornet. It just makes so much sense for them to revert back to this logo and modify it to fit with today's style. The current logo doesn't quite fit the minimalist look, but it is a simple clean design. Which I think we can easily achieve with a hornet still.

This was a quick breakdown but now I'm inclined to try and develop my own version of Watford's logo. Even though I said I don't like the addition of the red, I think I would still keep it in my color scheme, though I might change the shade. The yellow and black are great contrasting colors, so I would definitely keep them. And yes you guessed it, I would get rid of the stag and take a simple modern approach to the hornet and re-incorporate it into the shield.

Straight to the point, if the stag were to be replaced with a hornet, this logo would be in my top five logos in the Premier League. Hmm who are in my top five?.... stay tuned and let me know your thoughts!

RATING SYSTEM
ORIGINALITY 7
CREATIVITY 3
COLOR SCHEME 5
OVERALL 5/10

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