The Club Logo

CLUB LOGO

As far as it is known the club has had only two logo’s since it was formed in 1958.

Who, or when the first logo was designed is not known, but several cloth badges were produced for members to buy. The logo itself was a white shield with a gold edge on a green background. In the centre of the shield was a red ring with 3 arrows converging on the centre. Between the arrows were the letters S A C, one between each arrow.

Underneath the shield was a banner with the clubs moto written in Latin, “NIL SINE LABOR” which means “NOTHING WITHOUT EFFORT”.

Only two examples now exist as far as it is know of this type of club badge, one framed and hung in the club house next to a picture of the original club house, the other, which is identical but with gold braiding, is kept elsewhere for safe keeping. Both these badges were donated to the club by old members.

By the late 1980’s the membership of the club was starting to grow and a large proportion of the members were entering open competitions, with a fair amount of success. These members naturally wanted to show which club they belonged to, but when they asked for badges the club had none to give.

It was at this point that John Shenton proposed that the club redesign the logo and then have the new design made into cloth and pin badges. The idea was approved by the committee who then decided to run a competition where every member was invited to submit a design, if they so wished. The designs would then be displayed in the club house and members could vote for the one they preferred.

At the end of the submission period there was about 8 designs, these were all then put on display, in the clubhouse, and over the next two weeks members voted for the one they wanted.

At the end of the voting period the votes were counted and the new logo chosen. The design that won had more votes cast for it than all the other designs put together. The new logo was designed by Neil Foden and was based on a traditional flint arrowhead.

There was an outer blue border and an inner red border. Between these two borders were the clubs name in the upper two edges, then along the bottom was the club moto. In the centre of the inner border was a standard target face with three arrows converging on the centre.

Both an embroidered cloth badge and a plastic pin badge were produced of the new design. The pin badge was usually worn by members on their quiver with the cloth badge being sewn on to the sleeve of a T-shirt or sweatshirt. The sleeve was stipulated to be that of the one the archer drew the string with, thus making it visible to everyone behind then when on the shooting line.

The original order for both sets of badges was quickly sold and new ones needed to be ordered. However before this was done one of the newer members pointed out to the committee that the club’s moto as written on the badges “ASQUE LABOR NIL” was wrong! That was quite a shock as this had been taken from the only source we had at the time, the logo on the clubs score sheets. Obviously somewhere along the way this logo had been copied wrongly, and without any of the original badges being available to us at the time the mistake was not noticed. Several members then spent a bit of time doing research before it was found that the correct wording for our moto should be “NIL SINE LABOR”. It was nice to have this confirmed years later when copies of the original badge surfaced bearing the same moto. Another fault, which was known about, was that the red and blue colours of the target face have been reversed. This was a production fault which was only spotted when we first received them, but due to the amount of time it would take to return the badges, approve a new design and then have them made the committee had decided to use the badges.

The correction to the moto called for a bit of quick redesign on the logo before the new orders could be placed, It also meant that anyone who had a badge from the first batch now had a limited edition badge, which will at least be a curiosity in future years if not something of any real value. Do you have one, or have you seen one?

The embroidered cloth badges were reordered as previously, but this time instead of a plastic pin badge the club opted to have a bronze metal pin badge produced.

Since then there has been one other pin badge produced, which was to commemorate the clubs 50^th anniversary in 2008. This badge, which was enamelled, contained the standard logo set on a blue circle which was surrounded by a green band containing the words 50^th anniversary. Also for the 50^th anniversary one of the club members reproduced the original club logo from the specimen in the club house, which was used on commemorative T-shirts.

Most of the clubs members now buy club clothing which has the logo already embroidered on to it, either on the back or on the left or right breast on the front of the garment.

Towards the end of 2017 all members of the club were invited to submit designs for a logo to commemorate the club’s 60^th anniversary, which would take place in 2018. At the end of the submission period there were eleven designs produced by three members. The membership was invited to vote for their favourite design via an online survey. The winning design, by a clear margin, was produced by Neil Foden. Pin badges and clothing bearing the design were produced to celebrate the 60^th anniversary.