Note: While FIFA recognizes FCSB as the successor of the historic Steaua, The Bucharest Court of Appeal, in a 2021 sentence, gave the records and trophies between 1947 and 1998 to the football department of the CSA Steaua București, reactivated in 2017. Given the confussion that exists to this day about the clubs' identity, I decided for this project to redesign the badge of the club that existed in the 85-86 season, when it was undisputedly recognized as the only Steaua.
When rebranding a club, I always like to go back to its visual history to see what could be done, and even what shouldn't. Given that the identity of Steaua is inevitably linked to the star and a determined set of colors, and that I like the potential of the current badge. I was happy to see that there's enough in the clubs' history to create an interesting update.
During its succesful history, there have been badges featuring diferent tones of the same colors and versions of the iconic star, and that's what I used for this project: diferent shades of blue allow me to separate the badge from any possible surroundings and to create interesting contrasts, while diferent shades of yellow make it easy to create a beveled, more distinctive star, like the one used during the 60s.
With the new color palette determined, the next step was to merge the elements in the most appropriate way possible to avoid unnecessary clashes while keeping the structure of the current badge, but in a much modern version inspired also by diferent shapes of the past.
Having created a badge that was both modern but attached to club's visual history, there was room to be bold in the final element: the wordmark. The words "Steaua București" appear in a similar disposition, with in a bespoke font deliberately made in white and red, as a nod to the uniform sported by the club in 1986 Champions League final.
