The Club has launched a new logo to be used from next season onwards.

"No one likes change, and two people seldom agree on the same designs, so changing the logo is not a soft option and certainly hasn't been done just for change's sake," comments STFC chief executive Steve Wellbeloved.

"The bottom line is that we have to be able to protect our brand. We can't do that with our current logo, nor with tweaked versions of it that look any good, so we've had to make a decisive change.

"That being the case we felt it was important to turn necessity into virtue and to do it well, so the new logo has been designed by an expert - Tony Brooks - who has worked on corporate identities for hundreds of blue chip organisations over many years. The fact that his business (Brooks Design) is based in Shrewsbury and both he and his family are long term supporters and Riverside season ticket holders is an added bonus. He was very mindful of the Club's traditions, but also had to grapple with the extensive advice coming in from lawyers and patent specialists.

"The result is a clear, strong, clean logo. And, crucially, one that has passed all the necessary searches and so is able to be registered in 14 trademark classes - covering a full range of Club activities both current and future.

"So, going forward, only people we licence will be able to use our Club's logo and we have a solid platform from which to defend that position, using the courts as and when necessary. That may all sound very heavy-handed, but the reality is that we are dealing with significant amounts of money and a Club that wants to move forward has to protect its assets.

"Like many fans I've got a houseful of items bearing the old logo. We're all quite attached to it, but this is a case of having to bite the bullet and do the right thing for the future. The good news is that having faced up to this, the Club has then gone about it professionally, and the end result cuts through all the legal 'do's' and 'don'ts' to give us a clear, crisp identity".

Read on for a more detailed Q&A on the logo change.

STFC Chief Executive, Steve Wellbeloved, answers questions about the Club's change of logo

Is it really necessary to trademark our logo?

Yes it is. It's very important to own and be able to protect our identity. Even though we are currently a lower league club we are already having significant problems. For example, rip-off merchandise where the proceeds end up in someone's back pocket rather than our team budget. Similarly, commercial company websites that make great play of supporting the Club and are adorned with our logo. Not only have those companies not paid an appropriate sum for that endorsement, they may actually have no commercial relationship with the Club at all. Worse still, their goods, services or trading practices may not be of a type we are happy to be associated with.

That latter point then also has a knock-on effect as we talk to major sponsors. Their due diligence work quickly identifies that our corporate ID is inadequately protected and that makes them very wary of associating their own, valuable brand with it.

Obviously we are an ambitious club intent on playing in higher leagues. So these trademark problems will only get worse as we progress and the amounts at stake get greater. It always pays to protect a brand before you invest in it, so the time is right to get this sorted. Added to which, with all the signage and literature being prepared for the new stadium, if we are going to make a change, then now is the time to do it.

Why couldn't we trademark our old logo?

The legal position has been quite complex, but basically the logo is far from unique and that compromises the extent of registration and protection available. And it has already limited our attempts to enforce against what we consider to be infringements. Perhaps the easiest way to answer the question is to note that the Board started from the position of not wanting to change the logo. So the fact that we have changed reflects the amount of legal and associated advice that we've received.

Why couldn't we just tweak our old logo?

I've seen quite a few comments on this, but it's nowhere near as straightforward as people assume. I've been a reader of the bulletin boards like B&A for some years, enjoy them and often find them useful. However, a downside is that when a subject like this comes up you suddenly find you've got 300 patent experts and 30 or so fully qualified patent attorneys all of whom are quick to offer their expert opinion. Sadly, in many cases, the expertise is not as great as the tone of authority with which it is delivered.

Suffice it to say, the Club spent a long time looking at tweaks, not least because the Board and even the designer wanted to retain elements of the logo - for example, the three loggerheads and the shield. But in reality, the level of compromise needed was unworkable - you end up with a logo that looks like it's been designed by a committee rather than a designer. It's a fudge and it's so far from the original that traditionalists dislike it, yet lawyers advise that it still isn't different enough to provide maximum protection.

In the end, it's a route to nowhere because the whole rationale for change is to get strong protection for our identity. Going through the pain of making a change but then settling for less than ideal protection is a nonsense.

So, if you are doing this properly, the point comes when you instruct a professional designer to note the legal advice and produce something that meets the requirements and is clean and crisp. That's where we are, and personally I think that's down to good design but also the fact that the designer is a long term fan with a sense for what a logo means to fans.

Why couldn't we have had a fans competition to design the logo?

We did look into this. To be honest it would have been a nice cop out as well because if the end result wasn't liked, the anti comments wouldn't have been directed to myself or the Board!

However, the reality was that the design requirements were very specific - from the basics of having to work in colour, mono and greyscale, to technicalities of suiting different processes such as embroidery and stereo printing onto merchandise where tight colour alignment can be an issue. All this type of stuff is grist to the mill for professional logo designers, but would have led to a very long set of competition rules.

More importantly, the point of the new design is to achieve registration so that adds a whole raft of additional rules, some of which are quite surprising. Added to which, shortlisting for the vote would have meant trademark searching every shortlisted logo and that would be cost prohibitive - several trees were felled just for the searching that has been done on the new logo and during the process it became quite normal to get reports that were 3-400 pages long.

Finally, of course, we may have lots of budding designers, but very few with proven experience in this field. I'm delighted that we did have at least one fan - Tony Brooks - with exactly that experience and he was willing to invest a lot of his time helping us on this.

Why weren't we consulted and why has it taken so long to tell us when rumours have been circulating for some time?

As uncomfortable as it may be, the truth is that scope for genuine consultation was limited. I'm in favour of true consultation, but not really one for going through the motions, and definitely not when we are so stretched with the new stadium workload.

What would the consultation have covered? The decision to change wasn't really a yes/no matter as in? 'if enough people want to keep the logo we will turn a blind eye to the fact that we are investing in a brand we don't own and can't protect'. For the reasons mentioned earlier, we had to change and it falls to the Board to take tough decisions like that as part of moving the club forward.

Then the logo itself? Some fans did contribute in the early stages, but in almost every case their observations contradicted the legal and patent advice, showing just how difficult this was. It also wasn't feasible to get several logos fully searched and then take fans views - and it would have been comical to do it the other way round, wasting fans time in selecting a logo which we then go on to find can't be registered.

Added to which, of course, no two people tend to agree on design matters. So we had people arguing for the shrew and vehemently against it. People who loved the river loop logo, and people who detested it. All in all, the best route forward was to make sure we used a professional designer and took expert legal and trademark advice. The Chairman took this very seriously, understood its importance to fans, and made sure he saw each and every design throughout the process.

As far as announcing the change is concerned, it was critical to get the trademark applications filed before making the announcement. Announcing first and filing later risks the embarrassment of a failed registration or, at the extreme, someone else registering first as is common practice with Internet domain names. If you see how some people have abused our current logo, that perhaps isn't quite as far fetched as it seems.

So having got a finalised logo, we had to go through the search and registration process. During that someone took it upon themselves to leak the news and describe the logo. On the one hand you can argue that it's a free world. On the other, the usual form is that people who do that sort of thing are motivated much more by wanting to be 'big' than by acting in Club's interest. Personally, I'd rather be working with people who put the Club's interests first and I'm glad that the vast majority of our team do.

We're going public as soon as the logo has been secured, announcing earlier could have jeopardised the whole purpose of making the change.

Isn't this just about a new Chief Executive trying to make his mark?

Believe me, if I was in to that sort of stuff I'd pick a much softer area than something as emotive as the Club's logo. And we're far too stretched working on the stadium move to be messing around making changes for the sake of it. The commercial case for having a properly protected logo is overwhelming. I've been appointed to work with the Board in developing the club's commercial standing, so it would be a poor show if I took the easy option and ignored the fact that we are unable to protect - and therefore fully exploit - our assets.

Do you like the new logo?

Yes. I liked the old one too, or at least I guess you become familiar and attached to them and find it hard to imagine a change. But in this case change is necessary and so I'm glad that what we have ended up with is bold and clear rather than some of the fudges you see when people avoid tough choices. I think the new logo will grow on us all. What sold it to me was when the designer mocked it up as a sign on the new stadium. If that's anything to go by, then I think it will look very good and after a few years most of us will be as attached to it as we are to the current logo. In the period between now and then I'm sure I'll get some stick, but that goes with the job.

When will the logo start being used?

In my past work I've seen overnight changes where firms take all their people and vehicles off the road and literally change everything in a matter of hours. I've usually regarded it as a tragic waste of money, although I can see that for firms with money to throw around it does add impact. In our case, we definitely don't have money to throw around.

So we will be phasing the introduction, but anything new being produced in connection with the new season and new stadium will carry the new logo. We won't be ordering any new shop stock with the old logo, but we have a good range in so I guess traditionalists may want to stock up. Residual shop stock will move with us, but in general almost everything else at the new stadium will be based around the new logo. To a large extent the new stadium heralds a change of gear commercially and so it makes sense to have a protected logo in place from the move onwards.

I'm sure there will always be a place for the old logo and those with it as a tattoo will obviously continue to sport it with pride. We will also continue to use the limited protection available to us in terms of protecting its use as best as we are able.

Will we really have the gumption to enforce protection of the new logo?

Yes. Almost everyone wants to see our Club back in the Championship. That would mean we were playing well above ourselves in terms of our catchment area and so on. So we will have to lead the pack in commercial performance as well. Being nice would be a bonus, but being effective will be essential. So the gloves will be off and we will protect what's ours. Of course, we have to keep a sense of perspective and make sure our prime targets are the crooks who seek to profit from our good name, but the cleanest route forward has to be zero tolerance of unauthorised use.

How can we get permission to use the logo?

There will be a formal application and approval process. We will work constructively with the 'STFC family' on this, but no one should take this for granted and assume they have automatic permission to use the logo. This isn't control freakery - it's just that you don't go to all this trouble to get a protected logo and then sit back and let it be used willy nilly without clear benefit to the Club.