Everton's fans have this week led the way in a power shift which could have huge repercussions across the whole of football, certainly in England.  When presented with a new club crest, supposedly created via consultation with a fan sample focus group, the immediate backlash from Evertonians morphed into a quickly populated petition against the move.  Accordingly, the new crest will be reevaluated before the 2014-15 season, perhaps being scrapped altogether after just one year.

The complaints concerned the new crest's drastic transformation of the depiction of Prince Rupert's Tower, the removal of the laurel wreaths, the general simplification - or "dumbing down" - of the crest as a whole and, most controversial, the removal of the Latin motto "Nil Satis Nisi Optimum" (nothing but the best is good enough).  The truth is, Prince Rupert's Tower is the most accurate rendering of the famous Everton Brow-located building - if a little cartoony - simplification of the crest is widely accepted as a requirement for consistent and cohesive branding and marketing across various media and the Latin motto, well, we're not really sure why the graphic designers got rid of that.

Let me outline a kit design fanatic's descent into insanity - assuming, of course, that insanity is not a prerequisite.  First he'll tell you that football fans should have greater input into their teams' kits, via kit design competitions and votes.  Then he'll backtrack, saying kit manufacturers have listened and learnt and we should leave them to it.  Next he'll qualify that assertion, suggesting some fantasy and amateur kit designers are the peers of the professionals.  Finally, as the straight jacket is fastened, he'll scream that amateur kit design leads the way in ingenuity, sartorial restraint and respect for tradition and is now superior to the efforts emanating from Nike, adidas, Puma et al.

The recent evidence gives this opinion some credence.  The Middlesbrough Futsal Club competition (mark II) shows that, when it counts - such an occasion can be defined by a trip to Italy being on offer - DesignFootball.com's members pull out all the stops to produce kits with originality and inspiration the like of which is often lacking from major releases.  The trite exclamation that a five minute Football Manager mockup posted on a club's fan forum is "better than this season's top!" has long been surpassed by far more genuine reactions to far more elaborately and thoughtfully constructed works of genius.  Five years ago no one really would have followed through on their risk-free empty promise that they'd "buy it if they released it!" but now it's accompanied with a yearning for it to come to pass - and is more likely than ever to do just that.

About a year ago I wrote an article congratulating the football kit design industry.  They had, in my mind, reached a point where we no longer needed to scream at them what we wanted in a kit, no longer needed to plead with them that they treat our club or country's colours with respect.  They had listened and learnt.

That was, as history will clearly show, a sweeping generalisation.  I stand by the sentiment - I believe the last 18 months or so's higher profile kits to be, on average, the best ever - but the professionals still occasionally fall short.  Most importantly, I never wanted to give the impression that DesignFootball.com's members were p*ssing in the wind by having a go themselves.  I might claim to be abandoning "the desire to see football fans involved in the design process, either by way of consultation, kit votes or simply allowing the fans to design the kits themselves in competitions" but in this I refer to everyday schlubs which have an opinion on everything and an answer to nothing.  They have had their say and it's been duly noted.  DF's members are a class apart.

So that's that.  An eclectic year in the world of football design packed full of ample good, bad and ugly.  A year when football design intertwined with some of the biggest news stories to ensure 2012 would leave thousands of brightly-attired images indelibly printed on our memories.  Let's take a look back...

The London 2012 Olympics

As cliché'd as it is to bring it up, London 2012 nailed it in oh so many ways, not least with Stella McCartney's football kit (well, the shirt - the shorts and socks were stripelessly lame).  Both the men's and women's Team GBs went out of their competitions with a whimper after encouraging starts but their shirts, in keeping with the stylish adidas outfits of the other athletes, were a breath of fresh air that will be looked back on with fondness.  If only McCartney had been tasked with designing the England kit.

And so it's that foreboding time again, when we knock years off our life expectancy traipsing around shops and jumping from website to website desperately attempting to locate gifts for our nearest and dearest that will satisfy them, avoid us losing face whilst also maintaining whatever degree of solvency we hold in this current financial gloom.

I realise not everyone celebrates Christmas, and not everyone will be buying gifts during this period, but I will, and this is my blog, so please indulge me.  Besides, for those who are in a similar position to me, it's tricky, and I'm here to help...

Now, an ideal Christmas present, you'd think, from a football design point of view, would be a football shirt.  Sadly, this isn't necessarily the case.  The marketing geniuses that run football clubs' merchandising wings have an unhelpful knack of allowing several sizes of most popular new shirts to go out of stock by mid-September.  So whilst I'm sure I'll compile my kits of the 2012-13 season at some point, that won't really help us as you can't get hold of them.

Goalkeepers - a different breed.  This goes for custodians and their wont of individuality in the attire they take to the field.  We all will reference Jorge Campos' day-glo oversized kits of the mid-nineties and Fabien Barthez, the wannabe outfielder, bringing short-sleeved goalkeeper shirts to the Premier League - despite Peter Schmeichel having already eschewed forearm coverage for the same club previously - but the evolution has taken several twists and turns over the last few years.

If we travel back half a century, goalkeeper shirts were generally functional and seldom evoked the personality of the footballer inside.  The colour distinguished the player from his outfield teammates, like the blue blood rather than the subjects' red running through the veins of the British royal family, in order to indicate that this person lived by a different set of rules.  Shorts and socks could match the rest of the team, as below the waist a goalkeeper was akin to anyone else, but when the sleeves came into play these needed to be easily noticeable as legally handling in the box.

Lev Yashin wore a black shirt, for the USSR, which became iconic through the wearer's exploits, and Peter Shilton added a stitched number 1 to his green shirt - inspiring Brian Clough's legendary green jumper as he was the "one number 1 around here" - at a time when any further identification had generally been deemed unnecessary.  Aside from this there was a landscape of green - and yellow internationally - with few exceptions.

Contrast this with the spectacular - often horrendous - designs of the nineties.  The no-holds-barred assaults on the eyes of opposing strikers gave us some of the most gaudy designs we've ever seen on a football pitch.  Schmeichel modelled plenty of shocking styles with great success for Manchester United and Denmark.

The other option was to kit out goalkeepers in a design derived - with extra padding - from the strip his teammates would be wearing outfield.  Both approaches continued into the last decade, evolving - perhaps denoting the increasing football ability of goalkeepers instigated by the backpass rule of 1992 - into 'keepers wearing shirts and kits bearing the hallmarks of intended outfield kits.  Padding seemed to be phased out and the goalkeeper shirt was often provided by a change shirt not that day in use.

Outfield teamwear also featured.  One of the most famous goalkeeper shirts of all time is now Iker Casillas' black and yellow number worn when lifting the Henri Delaunary trophy in 2008.  Rather than being a bespoke goalkeeper shirt - like Luis Arconada's worn by Casillas' deputy Andrés Palop when celebrating that triumph - it was a year old adidas Golpe outfield teamwear template.

Euro 2008 came at the end of a season when Olympique de Marseille's Steve Mandanda had worn the Golpe design, as well as following Gianluigi Buffon's lead by turning out in an alternative kit from the outfield wardrobe, and the favour was even returned by his teammates wearing the shorts and socks of an intended goalkeeper kit to avoid a clash against Strasbourg.

Confirming beyond all doubt that there was little, if anything, to differentiate outfield kits from goalkeeper kits in terms of functionality, in 2009-10 Hibernian announced a few weeks into the season that their all black goalkeeper kit would be doubling up as a Third kit, and was consequently marketed and sold as such.

It's an idea that should be embraced - as I have predicted and implored - by England and Umbro, with the enormously popular all red goalkeeper kit.  England already missed the opportunity to wear the recent yellow and white goalkeeper kit outfield - which would have worked as a clever nod to meetings with Czechoslovakia, Poland and Italy in 1973 - and, before Nike take over, the red England kit deserves to take up its rightful place on the pitch.  Umbro do England goalkeeper kits well - as the Away and Home change attest too - but the people have spoken (not convinced?  Apply a ctrl F search for "away" to this page).

However, goalkeeper kits now appear to be regressing to the identifiably functional and specific creations of yore.  They may still contain the moisture-wicking and temperature regulating technology of their outfield counterparts but they are now often unmistakenably made to be worn by the last line of defence.  One current fashion, from both adidas and Nike, seems to be designing goalkeeper shirts with lower arms a different colour to the upper - with the potential to confound referees already struggling to enforce rules on baselayers when short sleeves are employed.

So goalkeepers have their own style back.  Padding seems to be experiencing a resurgence, Uhlsport gloves have bright red fronts - risking the overused "he caught it red handed" pun - and, as the winner of a recent DF competition foretells, the louder patterns of the nineties may be commonplace again soon.  It will be sad to see the end of derivative styles such as the red France marinière goalkeeper shirt - based on the Away shirt of the time - but the characters which follow the lineage of individualists like warpaint-wearing Rüştü Reçber and Spider-man-masked Jérémie Janot will stand out like their personalities scream that they should.

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