FOOTBALL, music, coffee, art and soul: this is Melbourne in a snapshot.  

But, like the much-loved city, there is a whole lot more to it.

And so it’s fitting that the man behind the Melbourne Football Club’s newest logo is a lover of footy, a revered figure in the Melbourne music scene, loves a good local brew – of the coffee and beer variety – and is a highly-talented graphic designer. Oh, and just like the place he lives, he has a great heart.

Dave Larkin, front man of triple ARIA-award nominated rock band Dallas Crane, was the creator of Melbourne’s new logo.

As Melbourne’s in-house graphic designer, Larkin was given the brief to design the club’s new emblem.

Instead of turning to an external design house to come up with a new emblem for the club, Melbourne turned to its passionate, footy-loving graphic designer to take the red and blue into the future.

“I think I was able to bring some perspective to it, because I didn’t grow up as a Melbourne supporter, even though I love the club now,” Larkin told melbournefc.com.au.

“I could come at it as an outsider and be subjective to it. We wanted to find a meaningful way to create a new logo and be forward thinking with it.

“For me, the logo was just one way of unifying the whole look and feel of the club – because the club is really getting on with things.”

Larkin said the club wanted a logo that “transcended the ages”.

“We wanted the word ‘Melbourne’ to be more prominent in the emblem than it has been in the past – and that had to be loud and bold,” he said.

“It then came down to the ‘V’ and the MFC initials that were the two most striking Melbourne assets. We thought the MFC initials were most important – as beautiful as the red and blue jumper is – but we’ll still use the ‘V’ in a lot in our collateral.

“We wanted to bring the initials to life and make it a central brand mark. The initials will be the one constant in the emblem and we want them to always be there.”

Larkin said the new emblem also needed to be adaptable in the digital age.

“So much of where you see Melbourne propagated now is online,” he said.

“Your logo has to work at 32 pixels, just as much as 32 centremetres and we were losing impact with the previous logo the smaller it got. It was illegible and the colours were dark against dark.

“The heritage and history was rich on the previous logo, but there wasn’t much mention about the future. It’s not a bad thing to talk about history, but one of the things I sensed that needed to happen was: ‘how does Melbourne look in the next 100 years, rather than the past 100 years?’”

Overall, Larkin said sticking true to the red and blue colours – without any white on the emblem – was one of the most critical aspects in the new design.

“The biggest challenge was keeping two dark colours looking vibrant together. We really wanted to keep the red and the blue together and eliminate any white from the emblem,” he said.

“All of our emblems in the past have had white – be it in the background or in text. White does stand out, so we really wanted to be strictly red and blue and that was a pretty strong directive from the board down.

“We tried doing the emblem in a few different shapes, but we decided on an emblem that said a little bit about the past and a lot about the future. We didn’t want to go too flowery with it and we made it simple. There is not too much that will date.”

Larkin, who joined Melbourne in 2014 after almost 15 years on the road with Dallas Crane, said he “didn’t have a secret desire to design an AFL logo”, but acknowledged he definitely put his hand up for the job.

“I wanted to make sure that if it was me or whoever they went with, that we had a robust brand mark and one that was going to work with all of the considerations – size, merchandise and presence with peers,” he said.

“We wanted something that was going to last for a while and I at least wanted a say in that.

“The club at least liked what I was saying and I ended up getting the job, which was great.”

For Larkin, 2015 has been quite a big year.

Not only has the full-time Melbourne employee spent countless hours working on the logo – and his many other tasks at the club – he has also recoded his fifth full-length album with Dallas Crane, Scoundrels, featuring anthemic opening track The Sunnyside, which will be released on November 27.

Almost 20 years on, after forming in 1996, Dallas Crane has toured with legendary UK band The Who, plus supported the likes of Midnight Oil, You Am I, The Black Keys, Dandy Warhols, Status Quo, Ryan Adams and Ray Davies from The Kinks.

Given he has lived the rock and roll lifestyle, would the man who has shared the stage with some of rock’s biggest names ever have expected to design an AFL logo?

“It’s really cool and not something I expected to do. I’ve always looked at AFL logos and wished that some of them were a lot better than what they are,” Larkin said.

“An AFL logo has such a massive public face, so it’s a real honour to be given the opportunity to even suggest ideas – let alone have such a supportive club and board to allow me to see it through and take the lead on trying to make the right decisions for where the club’s headed.

“A lot’s at stake and most importantly the fans have got to be happy and everyone at the club’s got to be happy. We’ve got to have something that’s functional on all levels and looks good.

Overall, Larkin is proud of the finished product.

“It took about a 1000 goes and there are a big graveyard of logos before we arrived at that one,” he said with a laugh.

“At the start, I just wanted to go with the initials, but the problem was that with the initials being red, how does that sit on white paper? It then becomes the clash jumper or the Sydney Swans, so the colour scheme goes out the window.

“We wanted to try and find an emblem that had red and blue locked away permanently. We always wanted the red and blue to be united – that was a big part of the brief.

“This is the first Melbourne logo in the club’s history that only uses the colours red and blue without the incorporation of white anywhere.

“We’ve got such a great opportunity based on our name and where our home ground is. I think it’s going to be a fantastic journey. It’s a very good time for the club and the fans should be very excited.”