ant

Dont say that, The9 will get angry. He is our resident photoshoper FFS. You come on here with your 138 posts giving it large and mugging off our forum superstars. No place for that on here thanks.

Hahaha. S'true though!

ON another note, even if every one of last seasons STH's renewed there would still be 17,000 seats left to chose from FFS. Why do people feel the need to sit there on hold for an hour then brag about it on here?

Don't know about others but definitely wasn't bragging myself - more ensuring the hold music didn't turn my brain to mush.

What seat did you get?

Block 42, Row V. Didn't catch the exact number the woman said but wanted to get off the phone sharpish by that point. Nearer the away fans side though

Personally I think it was worth holding. Yes, the chances of anybody specifically asking to be given the seat I was after was low, but I'd wager that there's a fair chance it could have been assigned at random by the ticket office (they initially tried to offer a vague area of the stand, so I asked for the exact seat number). Especially given that block 42 is one of the most popular areas of the ground.

Didn't impact my work this morning anyway, Photoshop is easy enough to use one-handed

It doesn't mean there's high demand, just that the demand has all come at the same time.

I know. It was a throwaway, tongue-in-cheek comment anyway.

In my case I'm a contracted worker unfortunately, not trusted with a phone on my desk!

A whisker shy of 100 mins for me. Started phoning at 8.50am.

Trying to get a specific seat so want to get in there ASAP.

Likewise. Sadly I couldn't afford a season ticket last year so had to wait for general sale.

1h40m wait all in, that's definitely a phone holding record for me! All sorted now thank goodness Not looking forward to the £20 that'll lob onto my mobile bill, thought it would be an hour's wait tops...

OK, might have made a bit of a mistake in trying to get through first thing - been on hold for an hour now. Low demand, my arse! One of those situations where I don't want to hang up now though; come this far, might as well see it through

Thought I'd try to get on the phones before 9am in case the lines were open and it seems they are. Ten minutes holding and counting, could be an expensive call given that it's from my mobile! Want to get it sorted now while it's quiet at work though.

I feel the same about the Cortese 'song'.

If there's people who try to claim they're a 'better' fan for standing and/or singing then wow.

It's something I do because I enjoy it, not to proclaim myself a superfan. I suppose that accusation does ring true with some elements of our fanbase (the season ticket wavers in Block 42 for example).

When you've paid your money you can spectate as you like, of course you can. I don't think I've ever met anybody that prefers a quiet football ground though and that noise has to come from somewhere, which is why I prefer being in the Northam (whether sitting, standing or hunched praying to the football gods ).

I'm I the only one who thinks the atmosphere is often down to whats going on on the pitch rather than becuase some people decided to stand up? The chapel (actually the whole of SMS) can be like a grave yard at times usual becuase the game on the pitch is a pile of turd.

Fair point, but the way it often appears to be (for the Northam at least), the atmosphere dies the moment the stewards start enforcing the 'all seater' rule.

Sometimes the ambience of the fans isn't affected by a poor performance on the pitch - after we went 2 down against MK Dons for example; the crowd picked up and so did the players. Likewise negativity and staying quiet can have adverse effects when heads are down on the pitch.

Pretty sweeping ...then you assume that all that sit just sit in silence....

It's frustrating to be lumped in with a group when that's simply not you, isn't it There was meant to be a fair hint of irony in my post, apologies if that didn't come across and it appeared aggressive.

Standing in the Chapel won't fly, no - and that's fair enough. I'm glad that there's a section of the ground where it's possible to avoid sitting (got dodgy knees for one), but if it's not possible to be in the Northam I'll obviously respect the views of those around me.

Is there really such a good atmosphere away from the Northam? I defaulted to it for roughly 20 games at St. Mary's last season and was only in the Kingsland/Kingsland North for a handful. During home matches it certainly felt like the clapping and singing died down when people were sitting (enforced by the stewards or otherwise).

Northam is for the "I'm hard so I stand up" types.

Pretty sweeping... It's much more difficult to get an atmosphere going when everyone's sat down, simply doesn't feel right.

Let's all just sit in silence from now on then, happy?

Twitter started becoming popular in 2007, I'd count that as 'years' myself

As mentioned many a time above it's insubstantial fluff, even if true. Why would an agent be disgruntled with the club? If there's nothing in a deal for them financially. Looking at the bigger picture that's a good thing!

We'll have no bother signing players as and when Adkins decides who he wants to target and Cortese puts the wheels in motion. Perhaps more clubs ought to try to weed agents out of deals - the game would be better off for it.

WRT to the 'power' of agents, they wouldn't have any if the clubs didn't keep handing it to them.

Just seen this on Wikipedia (yes I know, I know - it's backed up by a semi-credible source though):

Nearing the end of his contract with Southampton, he was approached by MLS who signed him to a 4-year deal before entering him in to a weighted lottery that would allocate him to a single participating MLS club. Real Salt Lake were the winners of the lottery and immediately signed him to their roster.

Wow, I didn't realise that was what happened to him. Different world!

wont the cameras now see our new flag..?

All going well - and hopefully it'll mean the Liebherrs see the tribute in some form if they're not at the match

Even if anybody wants to carry on the silly 'Sky curse' trot, didn't we win our last televised game (Sheffield Wednesday at home)?

Shame that the thread discussing designs had to come to such a head. All the best with getting something together Mike, hope the final stages of getting this to fruition aren't such a ballache. Looking forward to seeing whichever design is chosen come the first day of the season.

I've just gone through all the designs for the first time and, whilst I'm no graphic designer, the one above jumped out at me has having the best all round look and feel. The black highlighting of the facial features makes it look most realistic and captures Markus' "cheerful chap" character the best IMHO. It is also the most removed from the KFC 'look-a-likes'

Unfortunately it's completely the wrong aspect ratio and utterly pixellated. The design has to be a vector graphic, not pixel-based. Exactly the same issue with the 'distressed' one - not to mention that where Markus' body meets the flag jars somewhat. Look at the Liverpool example heralded as a benchmark and then back at Gecko's - there's a reason that the style is so similar.

Obviously this is all just opinions, but there's too many opinions for anything to get resolved. Is a vote really necessary? Mike was right-minded and motivated enough to set this in motion when nobody else stepped up and now faces a ton of squabbling over the decision. Not to mention the fact there'll always be detractors, no matter how much or little effort they've contributed. Should his say not be the final one?

I don't like a halo - it's a bit OTT and the slogan covers it, I prefer the face (non-cartoony) to the waving pose which I think is a little bit cheesy, and I think a black image on the central area of a red-white-red flag with the "Forever A Saint" text in whichever colour means it can be read on each background is where I'd go with this.

 

The waving pic flag with slogan above is pretty good though. Surely the two-colour one is cheaper than a three-colour as well ?

 

PS Stick to conventional, solid lettering (the one above is perfect), that "distressed" effect looks gash and cheapens it as well.

Some valid points but yet again we see the problem of taking everyone's opinion into account! You can't endlessly compromise or amend, amend, amend. Not to mention that what some think looks smart others will judge an abomination.

Personally I think it's best to stick to the precedent of clubs that have got it right. As has been said rather less diplomatically there's a fair few less accomplished efforts in this thread. If we're not going to pay a studio to design it (highly unlikely), we should at least make use of the pro designers here who are willing to work on this for nothing.

Quick, ask GeckoSaint for the vector of the top of those 3 options and close the thread

Compare Gecko's design to the style used in the Liverpool examples and surely we can agree that it's getting closer now?

I second putting the text on one line. Although it'll lose some prominence, isn't it a sideline in terms of importance to the actual image anyway? Plus it'll allow 'Markus' to be bigger.

Mike has delivered a clear brief now in terms of what needs to be on the flag and where; we'd do well to stick with it or this'll never be sorted in time. Adjusting the typeface etc. (IF necessary) is a two second job once a clear winner is decided upon.

Sorry I meant using the white face (filled in white) as it appears on the white background (the original example) but this time on the red background. Does that make sense?

OK right, think I'm with you.

Literally all I did was take the white version of Markus' face from the red-on-white design and turn it red. No other alterations. The reason it looks like that is partly because of the way our eyes perceive colour/absense thereof, but also because there was a heavier emphasis on certain parts which worked against a white background but don't when placed on block colour.

As I said, it would take a few alterations to Scudamore's original vector image to make it sit correctly against a red BG.

If a concise brief is sorted before this evening I'll have a stab when I get home from work.

What happens if you use the red background; but keep the white face from the original white background design (with white font)?

Erm, unless I've misunderstood what you've written, that's what I did

Can we get this narrowed down to a 2 or 3 bulletpoint brief? A designer's worst nightmare is working without explicit guidelines, then having their drafts criticised for missing the mark. I've been meaning to properly get to grips with Illustrator for a while now so I'm more than happy to give this a go if I clearly know what I'm aiming for.

Not to devalue anybody else's contribution of course. Probably just time I stopped talking and started scribbling

Reverse the colours and then we can close the thread and get the thing made!

It's not as simple as that though. I've just done a very quick 'n scruffy colour replace in Photoshop and you can see that it emphasises some of the wrong parts of his face:

Now if it was decided that this is definitely the way to go then I'm sure Scudamore wouldn't mind adjusting that

One thing that I have noticed is that pretty much all of these have used fairly muted reds - slightly orange or pink in hue. The OS uses #d71921 (RGB - web designer remember ) as its background colour and that's a stronger, slightly more Southampton-ish colour - to my eyes at least.

Par exemple:

Just to give an idea of the colour difference you understand. Personally I like the design of him on the white but could understand if there were practicalities to consider if the flag was white.

As I said earlier, this could go round in an infinite number of circles. Might I suggest that we narrow this down to the current best design and 'perfect' just that one from there (in terms of font, copy and so on)?

Whether the way theyin put his comments across was off the mark or not, the content of what he was saying is spot on. However I'm glad that it's now starting to concentrate down onto the better efforts. Design by committee NEVER works (the process is often attributed to poorly designed or unpopular products) so suffice to say it may be necessary to eschew democracy (purely in terms of the absolute final decision making) in order to achieve a high quality flag.

I think we can pretty much all agree that even if there's subtleties about the design that you'd have personally done differently, it's worth glossing over them to ensure we don't waste £4k+ on something that looks sh*t and so never gets used again.

If we're taking forward the mooted design, nobody has to take it as read that that's exactly how it needs to be sent to be created. The red can be made darker, Markus can be brought out more - whatever is essential. It's very rare for there to be design work completed without any amends whatsoever. The difference is that you report to a project manager or brief owner, so at least there's only a few people in the feedback loop. Ultimately I believe IMO that it should to be JustMike in this instance as he was kind enough and committed enough to step up and take the mantle.

Mike - is there a timescale for how long it would take the company to create our flag and have it delivered? Just starting to think about when the deadline needs to be for the design stage to be completed. The other danger is that we endless tinker with it and it drags on too long for the flag to be ready for day 1 of the season.

Final note - GeckoSaint's design is striking and iconic, but it's almost certainly too intricate for a flag (my limited knowledge of creating on material at the scale we're discussing notwithstanding). It would be brilliant used on in-your-face media types such as a website's splash page or a matchday programme.

When Lallana was out injured I thought we became very narrow in our play (well, on the left-hand side at least). In fact the ball barely went there other than when Harding was charging forward.

Not sure though overall, could be worth a tinker if we definitely have the players to slot into the roles surrounding him. What I do know is that I was p*ssed off when EA changed Saints' default formation on FIFA 11 to the diamond. FFS!