New zenith logo. Emblem of "Zenith" was in the top ten worst in the world

On the first emblem of FC Zenit, the modern name was not used, since the progenitor of the St. Petersburg team was the Stalinets team, organized on the basis of the Leningrad Metal Plant in 1925. The flag with the inscription "Stalinist" was also the emblem football team and a symbol of the eponymous voluntary sports community. The main element was the inscription. The flag of "Zenith" consisted of vertical stripes of sky blue. A color close to the modern "electrician" was also allowed. Some sources claim that all shades of blue and green were present on the flag. The only rule with such a variety was the coincidence of extreme colors and the presence of an inscription.

After the team changed its name to Zenit, the emblem also changed. It represented the inscription "Zenith", in which arrows led from the capital letter. It was from them that the word was inscribed. Before last letter decreased slightly. Players have been wearing jerseys with this emblem for more than 30 years. She has only had minor cosmetic work. Sometimes the emblem of Zenith covered a quarter of the T-shirt, in other cases it resembled today's version.
In 1978, a modified version of the inscription appeared, which had sharper angles. The name of the team was inscribed in the arrow, in which the letter "Z" corresponded to the extension of the arrow, and the letter "t" to its tip. The transitions between the letters corresponded to the calligraphic canons of that time. Under this updated version, the club won the national championship for the first time.
In the transitional years of 1988-1991, the famous ship of the Admiralty appeared on the emblem of Zenit - one of the symbols of Leningrad. Transitions have changed, arrow. More emphasis was placed on the letter "t", which has grown significantly in size.
In the period from 1992 to 1997, the team was actively working on the game, so the inscription from the above emblem was used, without the golden ship and the words "Leningrad Football Club". After Zenit returned to the top division, these elements were returned, only Leningradsky was replaced with St. Petersburg.
The emblem of "Zenith" with a boat, the inscription "St. Petersburg" and a ball is canonical. It was under this emblem that the club became popular in Europe, winning the UEFA Cup and Super Cup, as well as three Russian championships.
In 2008, the logo underwent another change in the form of volume and a new font.

The new logo of Zenit, recognizable by many modern fans, was presented on July 11, 2013 in a historical place for the team - one of the workshops of the Leningrad Metal Plant. The emblem was designed by Wolff Ollins and Ilya Ruderman.
After Zenit won the national championship for the fifth time, the emblem of the club was decorated with a new element - one star.

The history of the Zenith logo

The question of the date of foundation of Zenith, despite the already adopted official figure, remains open. But for the history of the club logo, this is not essential. Let's accept that the official founding date of the future Zenit is true, and our team actually traces its history back to May 1925.

Of course, there was no question of any special club logo at that time. There were football teams of the Leningrad Metal Plant (LMZ) named after. Stalin in 1925-29. only occasionally, they played for their own pleasure exclusively in intra-factory tournaments, sometimes holding friendly matches with teams from neighboring enterprises, they did not participate in any official tournaments, even on a regional (not to mention city or all-Union) scale ... And therefore they did not particularly need decals. Just as they did not need strictly established club colors - as such, there was no club at that time either. The main thing is that the team jerseys should be the same color. And it doesn't really matter which one.

Something changed only in the early 1930s, when the LMZ football team first “came out”, making its debut in the Leningrad championship. The name then she wore quite prosaic, but in the spirit of the time: "Metal Plant". And it was then that a distinctive pattern first appeared on her T-shirts: a transverse red stripe with a large red five-pointed star inscribed in it in a red circle - a symbolic image of a turbine, the main product of the plant. Can this be considered the first logo of the future Zenith? Well, with a certain desire ...

And so it went on for the next few years. This logo appeared on T-shirts, then disappeared again - only the red transverse stripe remained unchanged, as a distinctive part of the uniform of all LMZ athletes.

In 1936, the first trade union Voluntary Sports Societies (VSOs) were founded in the USSR, to which, among other things, all the football teams of masters then available in the country were assigned. Initially, in the period 1936-38, almost a hundred DSOs were created, but subsequently they divided and merged, changing, renaming and gradually becoming larger, new ones appeared and old ones were abolished, and this almost continuous process continued for many more decades.

The first DSOs were formed on a departmental basis, and, for example, DSO Lokomotiv united railway transport workers, DSO Kolos - athletes from state farms, DSO Spartak - athletes from the field of industrial cooperation, DSO Dzerzhinets - transport engineering, DSO "Avangard" - heavy engineering, DSO "Zenith" - weapons, and so on. Each of the DSO, in addition to the names, had its own emblems, which, accordingly, became the emblems of the sports teams united under the auspices of these societies.

All athletes of the Leningrad Metal Plant, which in those years belonged to the trade union of workers in the electrical engineering industry, since May 1936 were united in the sports society “Stalinets”, which had just been formed under this trade union. Moreover, as in most other cases, all the sports teams of this society also adopted this name. So in May 1936, the Leningrad football team "Stalinets" - the former "Metal Plant" - appeared for the first time in the USSR championship.

DSO "Stalinets" also had its own official emblem, which, to some extent, can be considered the logo of football teams belonging to the society. Including Leningrad.

1936-1939

Contrary to popular belief, in those years, the players of "Stalinets" had this emblem on sportswear did not sew. Like, with a few exceptions, like Spartak and Dynamo, the rest of the teams did not wear their emblems. There was no such common practice. It was considered sufficient to observe the colors of the uniform of their DSO (white and blue for Stalinets, as on the logo), but this was also maintained without any strictness. More or less tried to keep the colors of their uniforms only Dynamo and Spartak, and, for example, the players of CSKA (then CDKA) for the first time put on their now famous red and blue uniform (red T-shirts, blue shorts) only in 1938.

In the period 1938-39, a massive reorganization of industrial management took place in the USSR. We will not consider all the nuances of this global action, but we will only note the fact that we are interested in the transfer in 1938 of the Leningrad Metal Plant. Stalin, under the patronage of which was "Stalinets", under the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Arms. Under this people's commissariat, there was its own voluntary sports society, bearing the name "Zenith". And during 1939 there was a gradual transfer of all the plant's athletes (basketball players, athletes, hockey players, tennis players, football players, etc.) to a new sports society.

This transfer was completed by the spring of 1940, and as a result, the Leningrad football team "Stalinets" officially changed its name in April 1940, adopting the name of its new sports society "Zenith". Along with the name, the logo has also changed. Now she looked like this:

DSO "Zenith", 1936-57

It is worth noting that on the very emblem of the DSO "Zenith" the arrow was red. But the colors of the team uniforms then usually corresponded much more often to the color of the banner of a particular sports society than to the very colorful colors of their logos. So the shape of the "Zenith", in general, did not match the color of the arrow, but the banner of the DSO "Zenith" - this color was called "electrician":

For the first time, the arrow appeared on the form of Zenit football players only in the post-war years. Moreover, even then it was far from always sewn onto T-shirts, and the Zenit team won the same USSR Cup in 1944 in a uniform without “identification marks”:

"Zenith" - the owner of the USSR Cup in 1944

Sometimes the form of "Zenith" in the 1940s looked like this:

"Zenith", 1948

But gradually, from the end of the 1940s, the Zenit arrow on the uniform became an almost indispensable attribute at any match of the Leningrad Zenit. Which remains to this day, despite the numerous modifications that have become especially frequent in recent years 20.

The appearance of the arrow on the form of the players of the Leningrad "Zenith" in the period 1940-70 did not change, and the small differences that still occurred were due only to the difference in artistic tastes and the professional level of the artists who painted it:

In the late 1950s, the first major rebranding of the emblem of the DSO Zenit was made. The branded Zenith arrow has lost its roundness, its contours have become sharper, straighter, giving the entire logo a more aggressive and impetuous look:

DSO "Zenith", since 1957

But soon after that, in October 1957, by the decision of the Presidium of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, the DSO "Zenith" was liquidated, and all its affairs were transferred to the jurisdiction of the newly founded trade union DSO "Trud". However, this did not affect the name of the Zenit Leningrad football team in any way, moreover, for another 20 years it continued to wear an old-style arrow on its uniform:

1950 1965 1976

In October 1966, the DSO Zenit, by a decree of the same Presidium of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, was restored with all its former paraphernalia, but the Leningrad Zenit team continued to compete in the USSR championships with the old arrow for more than 10 years.

And only since 1978, a new arrow appeared on Zenit T-shirts, which existed in this form until 1989.

It was with such an arrow that Zenit won its first medals in the USSR championship in 1980 and became the champion for the first time in 1984.

In 1987, the DSO "Zenith" was once again abolished, and in 1989 the Leningrad football club "Zenith" was transformed into a city self-supporting club. Accordingly, the logo has also changed. Additional inscriptions appeared in it, emphasizing the club’s belonging to the city of Leningrad, it was “attached” to the arrow soccer ball, as well as an image of a ship from the spire of the Admiralty:

In 1992, in connection with the renaming of the city, part of the inscription in the logo also changed: instead of "Leningrad" now "Zenith" became "St. Petersburg"

Published the top ten worst football club logos in the world based on the preferences and tastes of the journalists of the publication (which was emphasized several times throughout the text). The reason for compiling such a rating was the new emblem of the German "Wolfsburg", consisting of a rounded letter "W" of poisonous green color, which may soon appear in the semi-final matches of the Champions League.

According to British newspapermen, the rebranding did not benefit the team, but new symbol looks terrible.

Also, the authors of the publication criticized the logo of several other well-known teams - the Italian "Napoli" (for minimalism), the German "Hamburg" (for a strange design without letters, numbers and any references to the history of the team), the Czech "Bohemians" (for it is not clear where it came from in Prague kangaroo) and others. But, having reached the emblem of the St. Petersburg "Zenith", the journalists, unwittingly, went into a minefield.

The newspaper, in fact, did not write anything insulting about the Zenit symbol, especially in comparison with the same "Hamburg", which it went through much more harshly.

The British simply complained that after the rebranding, the emblem of the champions of Russia lost important elements: the Admiralty ship as a symbol of the Russian fleet and a round shape that makes it more like a logo. In the new version, there is nothing left but the name and year.

"That's not a real logo, is it?" - concluded in the publication.

However, this was enough to cause a storm. Most of the teams did not pay any attention to the article, but for some reason Zenit took it to heart and decided to take revenge on the offender with his own weapon. On the same day, the top ten worst newspaper logos appeared on the official twitter of the club, consisting entirely of emblems Daily Mail.

The British responded with a conciliatory post, once again praising the team's previous logo and recalling that Zenit won the UEFA Cup with it.

And in order to finally leave the victory in this one-sided dispute for themselves, the English-language twitter of the blue-white-blues shared a post by a Russian-Italian fan of Lokomotiv with a short entry from the Daily Mail - Zenit - 0: 2.

Of course, even when the Daily Mail subscribed to Zenit's twitter, the Petersburgers could not react without irony, writing: "Thanks for that at least."

We must pay tribute to the authors of the Zenit Twitter - their first post about the British newspaper became the most popular in the history of the St. Petersburg club. The British, however, did not accept the challenge, allowing them to compete in wit with themselves.

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No famous football club does away with its official emblem or logo. This symbol is the personification of the history of the football team. This emblem is passed down from generation to generation giving new players positive emotions and fills them with the strength to face the opposing team.

Club "Zenith" in its history has never changed its logo. Each new management tried to give the emblem only clear special features.
Until the beginning of the forties of the last century, the name of the team was completely different. This club was called "Stalinets". Nowadays, the emblem of the Zenit team looks like a simple blue inscription decorated with an image resembling an arrow.

However, already from 1940 to 1977, the word Zenith on the emblem has undergone major changes. Its design became brighter, as the inscription began to be written in different colors of blue, red and white, in addition, that same arrow became wavy.

Time passed and when it was time for restructuring, the club's logo also began to change a little. In 1988, a soccer ball was added to the emblem. And the famous arrow was framed from the phrase "Leningrad Football Club".

After in those troubled times the historical name was taken away from the city of Leningrad and it again began to be called St. Petersburg, changes were made to the emblem of Zenith. In addition, next to the inscription "Zenith", inscribed in the form of an arrow, there were drawings of a soccer ball and a ship, around which there was an inscription "St. Petersburg Football Club".

Several years have passed, and at the end of 1997 the logo is modified again, new details are added that give the emblem more modern look. In the image, an elegant arrow still occupies a central place, and next to it are drawings of a soccer ball and a ship inscribed in an inscription going in a circle. The creators of this logo see it as an irrepressible desire for victory and support for the victorious spirit of the team.

Relatively recently, namely in 2013, the leaders of Zenit made another decision to change their logo. "Zenith" lettering now looks like handwritten on a white background. In addition, the arrow remains unchanged in the design of the Zenith emblem, but numbers have been added, year of foundation of the club - 1925. Thus, an attempt was made to indicate the continuity of traditions in FC Zenit.

Petersburg "Zenith" is a recognized leader in marketing campaigns in Russia. And suddenly, the club's logo was ranked among the ten worst in the world according to the Daily Mail newspaper.

This rating was compiled by the publication after the German "Wolfsburg" beat "Real" with a score of 2:0 and got a chance to reach the semi-finals of the Champions League. "An ultra-modern club with an ultra-boring logo," the journalists concluded. This conclusion prompted them to conduct a whole study, as a result of which a list of the "Ten Worst Emblems" appeared.

The modern Zenit logo appeared in 2013. Then the designers decided to follow the path of minimalism. The ship of the Admiralty, the soccer ball and the inscription " Football club Saint Petersburg ". All that remained was the name "Zenith" in the form of an arrow and the year the team was founded. In 2015, after Zenit won the fifth championship, a gold star was also added to the logo.

It's funny that the sketch of the arrow was developed by British designers - the Wolff Ollins bureau, and brought to mind by the Russian Ilya Ruderman.

It's great that the club decided to pay more attention to making their graphics more modern. This is a logical step, and continuity was maintained by Zenit, and this is good, - the logo designer told the club's official website.

The logo that appeared was then highly appreciated by the veterans of the team.

Arrow, date of birth - that's cute. This is a real symbol of "Zenith", which is known to all of Europe and the world, not to mention Russia, - said former player club Alexei Strepetov.

The well-known designer Artemy Lebedev, in his Leadership column, also evaluated the club's logo and found several shortcomings. Among them, he named a very thick crossbar at the letter "T" and a collapsed perspective.

Not bad, but not class "A", - Lebedev stressed.

Along with the Zenit emblem, the logos of the Italian team Napoli, Wolfsburg from Germany, the Portuguese Pacos de Ferreira, another Germans from Hamburg, the Czech Bohemians, Valenciennes from France were included in the list of the worst. There are also three non-European clubs in this ranking. These are the Melbourne Victory from Australia, the Argentinean Newells Old Boys and the New York Red Bulls, playing in the MLS.

BESIDES

The official account of “Zenith” on Twitter responded to the British edition. They posted the logo of the Daily Mail newspaper with the caption: "Here is one of the worst newspaper logos."

British journalists tried to explain themselves: "Guys, we just like your old logo."

To which Zenit Twitter responded with a message with the old Daily Mail logo. "To us, actually, too," summed up the representatives of the club.