ReBrand: Strathspey Thistle FC

graphic

Strathspey Thistle Football Club was established as a junior side in 1993. The name was chosen so as to reflect the club’s belonging to the Strathspey community and not only to Grantown-on-Spey, where the club is based. During their sixteen-year spell as a junior side, the Strathy Jags won several honours, though never topped the table.

In 2009, the club became a senior side and gained admittance into the Highland Football League. Since that time, the Strathy Jags have been unable to break out of the bottom three in the league table, but being among the most recent club to join the league (alongside Formartine United and Turriff United), it is still ‘early days’.

The current badge is simple and requires no explanation. For my redesign, I incorporated elements of the current badge, bringing the club’s name into the heart of a stylised thistle image.

The home shirt below is based on an early Thistle home shirt by Umbro.

ReBrand: Rothes FC

graphic

Rothes Football Club was established in 1938 and joined the Highland Football League that same year. At the time, Rothes was home to five whisky distilleries, four of which remain in operation today. Local laird and whisky magnate, Douglas Mackessack, was an instrumental benefactor in these early years and the club’s home ground, Mackessack Park, is named in his honour.

The club boasts relatively few honours, with the 1958/59 proving to be their most successful to date. It was during this season that the Speysiders won both the Highland League as well as their first of two North of Scotland Cups. Despite their relative lack of success over the years, Rothes have endeared themselves to the ‘Highland League family’. When facing potential liquidation in the summer of 2015 due to an unpaid tax bill, the club chairman was approached by a number of other Highland League clubs who expressed their desire to help with Rothes’ financial difficulties. Ultimately, Rothes survived their financial scare thanks to help from local fans, including a significant contribution from local businessman Richard Forsyth.

In the autumn of 2015, following the resignation of much of the club’s board of directors, the Speysiders were able to make headlines in a more affirming manner, by fielding the league’s oldest-ever players, Derek Thomson, 51, and Gordon Younie, 55, during their league match against Wick Academy.

In redesigning the Rothes FC badge, I began by considering the local history. The current badge features a whisky barrel, reflecting the town’s relationship with the whisky industry. The club’s name and year of foundation being included within the shield are a violation of ancient Scottish heraldic law. For my redesign, I depicted the coat of arms of Rothes, which, traditionally, is represented by a blue field with a silver bend and three red buckles. I adopted the tangerine, black and white colour scheme in my depiction and included two barrels as supports.

The club adopted their tangerine shirts from Dundee United after the Terrors sold their old Tannadice Park floodlights to their Highland League brethren. For my kit redesigns, I decided to stick with the club’s current colour schemes, presented in a relatively minimalist fashion as a contrast to the relatively elaborate badge redesign.

ReBrand: Lossiemouth FC

graphic

Lossiemouth Football Club was established in 1945 and joined the Highland Football League the following year, where it has played ever since.

Despite competing in the Highland League for nearly three-quarters of a century, Lossiemouth has never won the league, one of only seven HFL clubs to have never achieved the honour (with the remaining six having joined the league much later: Fort William, who joined in 1985, Wick Academy, who joined in 1994, Inverurie Loco Works, who joined in 2001 and Formartine United, Strathspey Thistle and Turriff United, who joined in 2009).

The Coasters have a longstanding rivalry with their neighbours to the south, Elgin City, with City dominating most of their meetings until the early 1990s. The club’s first honour came in 1962, when they won the Highland League Cup. They would not add to their silverware until winning the 1994/95 North of Scotland Cup. They would repeat this victory the following two season and again in 2001 and 2003. The 1996/97 season proved to be Lossiemouth’s most successful, winning both the North of Scotland Cup as well as their second Highland League Cup and finishing the season fourth in the league table, being edged out of the third spot by Peterhead on goal difference alone.

The current Lossiemouth badge features a lighthouse superimposed over a stylised football in red and white, the club’s colours. The lighthouse is a representation of Covesea Skerries Lighthouse, completed in 1846 and located very near the town of Lossiemouth. For my redesign, I wanted to keep the lighthouse image, but decided to depict a version of the lighthouse more true to its actual appearance. As lighthouses function primarily at night and in poor visibility, I depicted a night’s sky in black and a representation of Ursa Major, suggesting the northerly position of Lossiemouth (which sits at the northern tip of Morayshire). I also included the Latin motto PER NOCTEM LUX (which can be translated into English as something like ‘the light through the night’), found on a Lossiemouth and Branderburgh burgh seal from the late nineteenth century. The motto is a play on the town’s patron saint, St Gerardine (or St Gervadius), who, according to legend, would set up flaming torches alone the shore in order to ward ships away from wreckage on the rocks. As Lossiemouth continue to plug away in the Highland Football League, perhaps the prospect of future success can be their ‘light through the night’.

I designed the home kit as a clear homage to another LFC, drawing inspiration from 1982 Liverpool home kit in particular. This colour scheme is reversed in the away kit.

ReBrand: Keith FC

graphic

Keith Football Club was established in 1910 in the small Banffshire town from which it gets its name. The club competed on a junior level until it was admitted into the Highland Football League in 1924.

Throughout their history, Keith have experienced sporadic regional success. They have won the Highland Football League on seven occasions, including three consecutive seasons, between 1979 and 1981. The club boast ten Highland League Cups, including another span of three consecutive victories between 1974 and 1976. Keith have also been Aberdeenshire Cup holders on eight occasions and have won the Scottish Qualifying Cup (North) four times. But the club’s experience of the Scottish Cup might leave a bad taste in some supporters’ mouths, with a notable 1-10 defeat to Rangers in the 1995/96 Scottish Cup, which drew national attention for all the wrong reasons.

The current Keith badge is what I would describe as, ‘nothing to look at’. Not only does it violate ancient Scottish heraldic laws, but it also features the club’s initials, which is unfortunate due to their sharing of these initials with a more famous institution. For my redesign, I have decided to incorporate the symbols found in the Keith coat of arms. The first, in the upper-left position, symbolises the ancient Kirkton of Keith and the historical tenure of the Lordship of Regality, the land upon which the town of Keith is located. This Regality—granted by King William I, or ‘William the Lion’, who reigned from 1165 to 1214—was held by the Cistercian Abbey of Kinloss. As a result, this part of Keith’s history is represented by the Cistercian Order’s blue field with fleur-de-lys.

The upper-right position features a crowned lion from the Ogilvy coat of arms. This represents James Ogilvy, 5th Earl of Findlater and 2nd Earl of Seafield, and Fife, who united and enlarged the communities of Old and New Keith to form the settlement of Keith in 1750. The bottom position features a shell which represents the Duff coat of arms, also relating to James Ogilvy. These symbols have all been adapted to the colour scheme of Keith FC and are enclosed within a circle, indicating the club’s name and year of foundation.

As the club has used their signature maroon home strip for many years—this giving the club its nickname, ‘the Maroons’—I decided to use maroon as the primary colour of the home strip, highlighted with light blue vertical stripes and accents. The away strip is again dominated by maroon and has white accents.

ReBrand: Forres Mechanics FC

graphic

Forres Mechanics Football Club was established in 1884. Several different theories have been posited to explain the club’s unusual name. One theory suggests that the club was formed when students at an establishment called the Forres Mechanics Institute (a number of Mechanics Institutes were established throughout the United Kingdom and former British Empire from 1821) formed their own club.

A more likely explanation is found in the research of Colin G. Watson. In his 1984 book, Forres Mechanics: The First Hundred Years, Watson argues that the club was formed when players left a pre-existing club based in the town, St Lawrence (now, a cricket club exclusively). Watson also argues that the name ‘Mechanics’ has nothing to do with the Mechanics Institute, but rather, is a reference to the occupations of these early players.

The Highland Football League was established in 1893 by members of the Inverness Workman’s Club. Forres Mechanics were among the founding members of the league, which also included Caledonian, Cameron Highlanders, Clachnacuddin, Inverness Citadel, Inverness Thistle and Inverness Union. Cameron Highlanders, Inverness Citadel and Inverness Union have all ceased operations. In 1994, Caledonian and Inverness Thistle merged to form Inverness Caledonian Thistle, who have competed as professionals since that time. Of these founding members, only Clachnacuddin and Forres Mechanics remain.

The Mechanics’ honours include two Highland League titles, seven Highland League Cups, eight North of Scotland Cups and the 1963/64 Scottish Qualifying Cup (North). In 2016, the Mechanics qualified for the Scottish Cup competition and reached the third round—their highest ever advancement in the tournament—where they lost to League One side Stenhousemuir over two legs (having drawn the first 2-2 at home).

The current Forres Mechanics badge is distinctive. Its centrepiece is a version of the Forres coat of arms, which originates from at least the fifteenth century. It features the town’s patron saint, St Lawrence, standing between two victory palms. He holds the Gospels as well as a gridiron, upon which he met his martyrdom. It is most likely that the crescent and star relate to a paraphrase of Psalm 139.12 associated with Lawrence: ‘The darkness is no darkness to me, but the night is all as clear as the morning that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.’

I have great affection for the current badge, but in my redesign I wanted to present something that was not simply a version of the town’s coat of arms. In wishing to tie in both the town and the ‘mechanics’ side of the club’s name and history, I included the crescent and star of St Lawrence, which are flanking a hammer, all set in front of a cog. Upon the head of the hammer is found the year of the club’s founding. I have also included three six-pointed stars on either side of the outer ring, calling back to the current badge. For the primary colour scheme, I utilised the club’s traditional gold and brown.

The kit designs were made in keeping with the club’s traditional colours and occasional use of hoops, both of which I find particularly attractive.

ReBrand: Elgin City FC

graphic

Elgin City Football Club was established when two Elgin-based clubs, Rovers FC (1887) and Vale of Lossie FC (1888) united in 1893. For more than a century, the club competed in the Highland Football League, amassing a number of regional honours.

In the 1967/68 Scottish Cup, Elgin City defeated Albion Rovers, Tarff Rovers, Forfar Athletic and Arbroath to teach the quarter-final. Their opponents, Greenock Morton proved too strong for the Highland League outfit and Elgin City left the tournament after a 2-1 loss. No other Highland League club, before or since, has progressed as far in the Scottish Cup.

In 2000, the Scottish Premier League (the top tier in Scottish football at the time) expanded from 10 to 12 clubs, opening the door for the admittance of two new clubs into the bottom tier of the Scottish Football League. Elgin City, along with fellow Highland Leaguers Peterhead, were successful in their application and have competed in the SFL (and subsequent Scottish Professional Football League) ever since.

Throughout the vast majority of the club’s history, Elgin City’s home shirt has consisted of black and white vertical stripes. It was not until 1990 that the kit featured a badge, which is still used today. This badge, a rendering of the coat of arms of the city and royal burgh of Elgin, features the patron saint of Elgin, St Giles, supported by two angels and bears the motto, Sic itur ad astra (Latin for ‘Thus one goes to the stars’ or ‘Such is the way to immortality’, from Virgil’s Aeneid, IX). The angels and motto refer to the legend that at his death, St Giles was brought by angels to heaven.

Despite the conceptual strength of the current badge, I find its execution lacking. While I admire the strength of a minimalist depiction of figures within a badge, I wanted to add more details so as to better resemble traditional depictions of the Elgin coat of arms and to create more depth.

As I wished to include the fine Latin motto, I did away with the shield (so as to avoid conflict with the ancient Scottish heraldic law forbidding the use of lettering within shields that are not approved by the Court of the Lord Lyon) as well as the stone compartment in which the motto was written in the original badge. I placed this redesign within a circular badge and added a football to occupy the negative space above the shield bearing St Giles. The dominant colours of the redesigned badge (red and white) are in line with the specified colours of the Elgin coat of arms, which are taken from the traditional colours of the Moray region.

Both kit redesigns make use of traditional Elgin City colours. The home kit redesign is inspired primarily by the Elgin City kit used from 1991 to 1993.

As ever, I am indebted to Dave at Historical Football Kits for some of the historical information used above.

ellliottt

design & illustration

Morayshire

ReBrand: Strathspey Thistle FC

ReBrand: Rothes FC

ReBrand: Lossiemouth FC

ReBrand: Keith FC

ReBrand: Forres Mechanics FC

ReBrand: Elgin City FC