Like all football Clubs, Aston Villa has updated the way it looks from time to time - it's part of our evolution.
The Club has had at least eight iterations of its badge over our 142 year history.
Kicking off the 2016/17 season, our shirts will proudly boast an updated badge - incorporating some subtle yet important changes.
Passion, Pride and Purpose…
Aston Villa is a great English football institution - enjoying a proud, rich heritage which includes being a founding Club of the Football League in 1888.
We are also one of only five English Clubs to win Club football's most prestigious trophy - the European Cup.
This heritage has been represented throughout by a lion rampant at the centre of the Club's badge.
Lions have been used for centuries as the centre-pieces of coats of arms - widely perceived as the king of beasts, they stand for values such as bravery, valor and strength.
It's this spirit that made a heraldic lion the perfect choice by the Club's founders to represent our values.
However, when we asked about the design of the lion in fan focus groups, the feedback was that it did not adequately capture the heritage of the Club.
The lack of claws on the lion in the current badge was something that fans commented on specifically.
So from the start of the 2016/17 season, our shirt will display an updated badge - with greater emphasis placed on the heraldic lion at its heart.
Craftsmanship and design befitting of Aston Villa Football Club…
The Club commissioned renowned artist and engraver Christopher Wormell to design a heraldic lion for our badge which better reflects the Club's heritage, history and attitude.
The updated badge focuses on an enlarged and dynamic lion - its ferocity depicted in detail which on the badge will be shown through the stitching - while also retaining the star honouring the club's European Cup win in 1982.
Prepared…
As part of the review of our current badge - and in association with fan focus groups - we saw that the current lion was smaller within the shield - in part due to the word 'Prepared'.
This meant that our badge did not perform as well at very small sizes, notably in some digital applications.
So we had an opportunity to make it work both aesthetically as well as technically - without a significant change to what is a much loved badge of pride.
So now both the lion and our initials AVFC sit larger and prouder within the shield.
The word 'Prepared' will always be part of our heritage and it is a word that you will continue to see around the Club.
However it has not always appeared in our badges and in the fan focus groups, it was not deemed to be an essential part of the badge.
The lion in the badge will be an important part of the complete overhaul of the Club's visual identity in order to make us more effective in the digital age.
You may already have noticed the new lion on our current website, AVTV graphics and in Club publications.
And it will feature in retail products, in the Club store and in the new official website which we will be launching this summer.
