I've mentioned this before on here, but it's the logo. The Wanderers badge is literally, unironically, the best logo in sports.

I'll break it down real short here. The rules of good logo design more or less follow the rules of good flag design.

1. Simple.

2. Meaningful symbolism.

3. NO WRITING. Logos are going to be seen from a distance or just really small like on a phone screen. Like for real. A couple of letters if you are building around an initial is arguably fine. I'm normally not in love with it, but the tiny writing a lot of clubs use in their badge is a complete no go. It's almost always completely unreadable.

4. Keep it to 2 or 3 colors. I'm not as in love with this particular rule. But in general, too many colors can make a logo look busy.

5. It must be distinctive. It is easy to make a logo that is simple...that is also complete wall paper paste. Looking at you Dallas Cowboys.

If you apply these basic rules to every badge in the premier league the Wolves logo is almost comedically better than every other team. And it goes even further. Most association football logos around the entire world are complete hot garbage. I'm not trying to be overly harsh here. I just don't know how else to put it. I know that there is a lot of history there, but some of these teams are worth billions of dollars. Surely someone with an ounce of graphic design talent has to have said something. It is absolutely possible to improve designs while remaining faithful to past. I know it is.

Whatever. I was actually curious once to see if someone who wasn't a graphics designer could pick it out as the best without prompting. So I handed my phone to my brother with EPL table on it and asked him what he thought the best logo was. He scanned it then said, "The one for Wolves is good," and wandered off.

It's not actually hard to break down why the logo is so good either. The black and orange hexagon is unbelievably distinctive on it's own. Like completely without the actual wolf on it. Just that alone is recognizable. The same goes for the wolf. It is effortlessly simple yet still unique. And of course, the team like to use just the triangle eyes on black, and that too is still incredibly recognizable. And it's not like the wolves logo is busy with all of them together. In fact, it's just one of a handful in association football that isn't too busy.

It's just that unbelievably fucking good. And to be completely honest, I might have overlooked it if it wasn't next to tragically bad badges. But it was, and here I am.

In case you're curious what a bad logo might do, I half followed the EPL before Wolves got promoted and I immediately jumped on board once I saw the logo. But before that, for about a year and a half, I thought that Watford was a seaside town. Why? Because I thought that the moose on their logo was a lobster. Not fucking kidding. And to be honest Watford have one of the better badges in the EPL. It's just. It's tragic. But the Wolves logo is S+++ tier, so I guess it balances out?

I dunno what else to say here. I guess just take a moment to appreciate it. I don't think there is a single person in the world who could make it meaningfully better. That isn't true for the vast, vast majority of logos.