Arsenal Football Club

1886 as Dial Square

Holloway (North London)

Peter Hill-Wood

El primer escudo del Royal Arsenal en 1888, mostraba tres cañones orientados hacia arriba, al igual que el escudo de Woolwich. En 1922, el club adoptó el primer escudo con un solo cañón, apuntando hacia el este. Este escudo solo fue usado hasta 1925, cuando al cañón se le cambió de orientación hacia el oeste y a la izquierda de este figuraba el apodo del equipo, The Gunners. En 1949 el equipo cambió otra vez su escudo, esta vez con el mismo estilo de cañón, pero con el nombre del equipo en letra gótica sobre el cañón y la leyenda en latín Victoria Concordia Crescit (La victoria viene de la armonía). Por primera vez el escudo venía con colores, en este caso en rojo, verde y dorado. En el año 2002 el Arsenal introdujo un moderno nuevo escudo con líneas curvas y un estilo simplificado. El cañón cambió otra vez de orientación hacia el este y el color verde fue reemplazado por un azul oscuro. El nuevo escudo recibió algunas críticas de parte de los aficionados.

Royal Arsenal's first crest, unveiled in 1888, featured three cannons viewed from above, pointing northwards, similar to the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich. These can sometimes be mistaken for chimneys, but the presence of a carved lion's head and a cascabel on each are clear indicators that they are cannon. This was dropped after the move to Highbury in 1913, only to be reinstated in 1922, when the club adopted their first single-cannon crest, featuring an eastward-pointing cannon, with the club's nickname, The Gunners, inscribed alongside it; this crest only lasted until 1925, when the cannon was reversed to point westward and its barrel slimmed down. In 1949, the club unveiled a modernised crest featuring the same style of cannon, the club's name set in blackletter above the cannon, the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Islington and a scroll inscribed with the club's newly adopted Latin motto, Victoria Concordia Crescit (meaning "victory comes from harmony"), coined by Harry Homer, the club's programme editor. For the first time, the crest was rendered in colour, which varied slightly over the crest's lifespan, finally becoming red, gold and green. Because of the numerous revisions of the crest, Arsenal were unable to copyright it. Although the club had managed to register the crest as a trademark, and had fought (and eventually won) a long legal battle with a local street trader who sold "unofficial" Arsenal merchandise, Arsenal eventually sought a more comprehensive legal protection. Therefore, in 2002 they introduced a new crest featuring more modern curved lines and a simplified style, which was copyrightable. The cannon once again faces east and the club's name is written in a sans-serif typeface above the cannon. Green was replaced by dark blue. The new crest received a critical response from some supporters; the Arsenal Independent Supporters' Association claimed that the club had ignored much of Arsenal's history and tradition with such a radical modern design, and that fans had not been properly consulted on the issue

El uniforme originalmente fue rojo completo, pero de un rojo casi púrpura. En 1933 Herbert Chapman, queriendo ver a sus jugadores vestidos de una manera más original, actualizó el uniforme agregándole mangas y pantalones blancos, y aclarando el rojo. El equipo ha vestido así desde entonces, con excepción de los años 1965 al 67 en donde se volvió a usar un equipamiento rojo completo y en la temporada 2005-06, por ser la última temporada en que Arsenal jugó en el estadio Highbury, donde la camiseta del equipo volvió a ser de un rojo oscuro, en conmemoración del equipamiento que utilizó en la primera temporada en aquel estadio en 1913. El color es similar al que usa el Sparta de Praga, que a su vez inspiró su equipamiento en el del Arsenal de 1906. El equipo retornó a sus colores usuales en la temporada 2006-07.

Los colores de reserva tradicionalmente han sido el amarillo y el azul en pantalones, aunque usó a comienzos de los 80 un uniforme verde y azul marino. Desde la década de los 90, junto con el advenimiento del lucrativo negocio de la venta de camisetas, los colores de reserva han cambiado de temporada en temporada, usando algunas veces azul completo y otras veces amarillo. Actualmente se usa un uniforme con camiseta amarilla con mangas y pantalón azul marino y medias amarillas con una banda azul marino.

For much of Arsenal's history, their home colours have been bright red shirts with white sleeves and white shorts, though this has not always been the case. The choice of red is in recognition of a charitable donation from Nottingham Forest, soon after Arsenal's foundation in 1886. Two of Dial Square's founding members, Fred Beardsley and Morris Bates, were former Forest players who had moved to Woolwich for work. As they put together the first team in the area, no kit could be found, so Beardsley and Bates wrote home for help and received a set of kit and a ball. The shirt was redcurrant, a dark shade of red, and was worn with white shorts and blue socks.

Arsenal's original home colours. The team wore a similar kit (but with redcurrant socks) during the 2005-06 season. In 1933 Herbert Chapman, wanting his players to be more distinctly dressed, updated the kit, adding white sleeves and changing the shade to a brighter pillar box red. The origin of the white sleeves is not conclusively known, with two possible inspirations having been put forward. One story reports that Chapman noticed a supporter in the stands wearing a red sleeveless sweater over a white shirt; another was that he was inspired by a similar outfit worn by the cartoonist Tom Webster, with whom Chapman played golf. Regardless of which story is true, the red and white shirts have come to define Arsenal and the team have worn the combination ever since, aside from two seasons. The first was 1966-67, when Arsenal wore all-red shirts; this proved unpopular and the white sleeves returned the following season. The second was 2005-06, the last season that Arsenal played at Highbury, when the team wore commemorative redcurrant shirts similar to those worn in 1913, their first season in the stadium; the club reverted to their normal colours at the start of the 2006-07 season. Arsenal's home colours have been the inspiration for at least three other clubs. In 1909, Sparta Prague adopted a dark red kit like the one Arsenal wore at the time; in 1938, Hibernian adopted the design of the Arsenal shirt sleeves in their own green and white strip. In the 1930s, Sporting Clube de Braga's coach returned from a game at Highbury and changed his team's green kit into a duplicate of Arsenal's red with white sleeves and shorts, giving rise to the team's nickname of Os Arsenalistas. These teams still wear these designs to this day. Arsenal's away colours are currently the traditional yellow and blue, but there have been exceptions. They wore a green and navy away kit between 1982 and 1984, and since the early 1990s and the advent of the lucrative replica kit market, the away colours have been changed regularly. During this period the designs have been either two-tone blue designs, or variations on the traditional yellow and blue, such as the metallic gold and navy strip used in the 2001-02 season, and the yellow and dark grey used in 2005-06 and 2006-07. Currently, the away kit is changed every season with the outgoing away kit becoming the third choice kit, which is used for games where both the first and second choice colours clash with those of Arsenal's opponents, the following season. Arsenal's current third kit (formerly the away kit for the 2007-08 season) consists of white shirts with redcurrant shorts and hooped white and redcurrant socks