Hawthorn Football Club, known as the Hawks, is a professional Australian rules football club competing in the Australian Football League (AFL). The club’s visual identity has evolved through several distinct eras, from the HFC monogram of its early VFL years to the stylised Hawk head of the 1980s and the shield-based crest introduced in 2008.
Design and History
When Hawthorn joined the VFL in 1925, the initials HFC within a circle on a brown and gold flag were introduced as the club’s logo. At that time the club was known as the Mayblooms. In 1943, coach Roy Cazaly christened the club the Hawks, seeking a more robust image, and a new logo depicted a Hawk carrying a football in its talons flying in front of the Hawthorn Football Club flag. A stronger and simpler version of the Hawk was adopted in 1948, and the flying Hawk carrying a football was reintroduced in 1955, becoming the face of the Hawks through the 1960s and 1970s. [1]
In 1982, the club sought a new logo for its “new force of the 80s” publicity push. Hawthorn approached the Swinburne Institute, where a student submitted the winning design: the stylised Hawk head. This image represented the club’s most successful era, spanning five premierships. By the mid-1990s, after the club had endured the merger debate, the logo once more returned to the flying Hawk. [1]
In October 2007, club president Jeff Kennett unveiled a new logo at the Peter Crimmins Medal awards night, with the Hawks playing under it from 2008. The emblem was designed by the Australian design firm Cato Purnell Partners, under the guidance of Ken Cato. The new shield portrayed “a sense of determination, pride, and focus,” with Cato noting the design aimed to capture “the steely resolve it takes to win a premiership.” [1] The emblem showed “a strong, confident and determined Hawk, ready to hunt.” [2]
For the 2025 season, Hawthorn unveiled a 100-year commemorative logo celebrating a century since joining the VFL/AFL. Inspired by the 1925 iteration, the commemorative logo features the iconic HFC monogram in the middle, replicated for the 2025 version. The logo featured on the front of the club’s guernsey for the 2025 season as well as off-field apparel. [3] Design commentary noted the commemorative logo returned to the original brand mark with a bespoke lock-up, incorporating a ribbon element from the 1966 logo and a hand-drawn style calling back to earlier logos. [4]
Meaning and Symbolism
The Hawk has been central to Hawthorn’s identity since 1943, when coach Roy Cazaly told players they would be known as the Hawks instead of the Mayblooms, expecting them to “fight hard and carry the ball away with pace and dash to the goal.” The Hawk logo first appeared on club letterheads and the cover of the Annual Report in 1943, though it took another five years before the Hawk appeared on the club’s membership tickets in 1948 due to economic limitations. [5]
When the 2008 logo was introduced, Ken Cato described the design as reflecting “the focus and determination he had observed within the club,” with the new shield portraying “determination, pride, and focus.” [1]
The club’s brown and gold colours date to its entry into the Victorian Football Association, adopted after Williamstown already held the yellow and blue combination Hawthorn had previously used. The brown and gold have remained the club’s colours since that time. [6]
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