How important is a badge to a design, and what size should it be?

At the moment, some very big clubs (Liverpool, Ajax, Deportivo Guadalajara) are playing with crests on their shirts that a lot of their fans dislike. The current Ajax crest is pretty weak (an update of the pre 1990 one is being planned by the club) and Chivas have come under critisism from many of their fans for the over simplified crest, which looks modern now, but will probably look dated in the future.

so how important is the badge on the shirt. And do stars above it detract from the crest?

The badge is obviously the most important part of the shirt, or maybe second only to club colours.

For the clubs you mentioned, Liverpool, definitely needs a simplified logo for the shirt which of course first choice would be a Liver bird but since it is copyrighted to the city they can't solely use it. Although I have no problems retaining the current on for official use as it does well to tell a story of the club.

Ajax on the other hand went a little over the top when they simplified their logo, although it definitely needed an update, to make it so obscure was a bit of a mistake, but its good to hear they are trying to come up with a compromise.

Chivas really haven't changed that much to get ancy about in my opinion just got rid of a few over fussy lines and simplified the colour scheme of the city arms, it still emotes a Chivas look and is a gradual update which was needed for their logo.

If you mentioned someone like UAG (Estudiantes) Tecos I would maybe have to agree, although I think their new logo is really cool looking, they have sacrificed some of the identity the former logo gave them.

As for stars, I don't feel they detract at all, as long as they are not over used, I think they should only be used for league competitions though and be standardised so that 5+ league titles equal 1 star, 10+ 2 stars etc. Although in a league like Scotland this may have to be a bit different, maybe silver star equals 5 gold star equals 10 leagues.

Personally, I see the need to update the Chivas crest, but they should have updated just the roundel and script, and left the coat of arms well alone.

There are a lot of teams out there with crests that have got worse, Fulham for one, QPR, Sheffield Wednesday badge now looks really dated and that needs updating. But the one that needs the most work is stoke city, which looks really generic and dull, and they had a creat crest in the 70s.

As for Rangers, the main reason it has five stars above the crest is due to Celtic placing a gold one above theirs. Putting a star above your crest every time you win the league is a bit much. I remember Boca Juniors in the early noughties had to redesign the crest every 6 months or so to accomodate new stars. One exception might be Brazil, as there are 12 teams pretty evenly matched, and its like a superleague.

A special symbol for a great achievement that has never been done before should be allowed, such as the triple crown (Cruzeiro)