Launch of Swans new Brand

An open letter to all the valued people who make up the Swans community

As many of you are aware, the Swan Districts Football Club has undergone a significant transformation over recent years from a traditional football focussed club to a broad community enabler.

We’ve worked tirelessly on and off the field to become a club that no longer exists just to win football games, but to build community and develop people.

At Swans, we describe our deeper purpose to be a club that improves the lives of the people in our community through creating greater engagement in education; improving transitions to employment; increasing health and wellbeing; and enhancing community connections.

In short, we want to be a club that develops all of our people, including our players, to be the very best they can be.

This new purpose has reshaped so much of our club – including our business model.

And it’s time now to take another step.

We are launching a refresh of our brand – including both our values and our logo - to align to the purpose I’ve described above.

This isn’t an unusual step. Brands evolve as businesses evolve. Times change, people change, and identities of clubs and businesses need to keep pace. It is incumbent on the club’s leadership to ensure Swan Districts Football Club remains relevant while protecting our long and rich heritage.

We’ve undertaken an extensive journey over the past couple of years reviewing our brand and this process has involved many of you both formally through workshops and interviews and informally through conversations and feedback.

I’d like to share with you some of this journey as we reveal our new brand values and re-designed Swans logo.

Fundamental to contemporising the Swan Districts brand was to acknowledge the club’s heritage yet embrace the future. To represent a forward thinking, adaptive and striving club.

Our values (see below) have been developed following wide-spread consultation and we hope they engage, unite and inspire individuals within our community to create a better life for themselves, knowing they have the support and belonging within something bigger – a family, a tribe, a community.  

Through this process, changes have also been made to our club logo. For those with a keen eye for detail, you will know logo changes aren’t entirely unusual either. We’ve had several variations over the years, for differing reasons. What I want to assure you is that the latest change is very deliberate – and developed with a view to the future whilst respecting the past.

We want this change to help achieve relevance with the youth while also maintaining that special relationship with our heartland.

We sought a single, consistent and powerful visual identity representing both our heritage and our strategic aspirations.

Of course, the colours had to be black and white, solid and strong, and the image of the fighting swan was non-negotiable.

The text, however, has reduced to one word. The core of who we are, the central figure in our identity in both years gone by and in the future. We are Swans.

It’s my great privilege to share with you for the first time these changes to our Swans brand.

I hope they resonate and reconnect all of you to our common love.

Peter Hodyl

President