An English founder, a cricket club and a city name.

AC Milan began in 1899 as the Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club, founded by the English expatriate Herbert Kilpin. English Wikipedia says the club marks 16 December as its founding date, while historical evidence points to a date a few days later, probably 18 December; the founding charter itself has been lost, so the exact day remains open. The club’s full name today is Associazione Calcio Milan, and outside Italy it is commonly called AC Milan or simply Milan.

The early years produced the club’s neighbour as well as its look. Wikipedia records that in 1908 a split over the signing of foreign players led a group of members to leave and form Internazionale, the club now known in English as Inter Milan. The two clubs later came to share a home: the stadium at San Siro, which Milan moved into in 1926, has also been Inter’s ground since 1947. Their meetings are known as the Derby della Madonnina, after the statue of the Virgin Mary on top of Milan Cathedral.

Ownership has changed hands several times in the modern era. Wikipedia says the entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi, owner of Fininvest, acquired the club on 20 February 1986. Fininvest sold the club to a Chinese-led investment vehicle in a deal completed on 13 April 2017, and in July 2018 control passed to the American fund Elliott Management when its loan was not repaid on schedule.

The current owner arrived in 2022. Wikipedia says RedBird Capital Partners agreed to buy the club on 1 June 2022. The Italian news agency ANSA reported on 31 August 2022 that RedBird, the American investment company led by Gerry Cardinale, had completed its takeover that day, buying the club from Elliott, and that Yankee Global Enterprises, owner of the New York Yankees, would enter a strategic partnership with the club through a minority stake. RedBird has owned the club since 2022, and the club is based in Milan.

Fire, fear and the flag of Saint Ambrose.

The colours came from the founder. English Wikipedia says red and black have represented the club throughout its history and that Kilpin chose them to stand for the players’ fiery ardour (red) and the opponents’ fear of challenging the team (black). The pairing gave the club its everyday name: Rossoneri, Italian for “the red and blacks”, refers directly to the stripes on the shirt.

A second nickname grew out of the same colours. Wikipedia lists the Devil as another nickname derived from the colours, and records that an image of a red devil was used as the club’s logo at one point, and that it appeared on the match shirts in the early 1980s.

The constant on the badge is civic. Wikipedia says the club’s official logos have always shown the flag of Milan, a red cross on a white field that was originally the flag of Saint Ambrose, the city’s patron saint, set beside red and black stripes. The modern badge combines the club colours with that flag, puts the acronym ACM at the top and the foundation year 1899 at the bottom.

On the shirt, the badge arrived late. According to Wikipedia, from the club’s origins to the mid-1940s the emblem on the match kit was simply the flag of Milan, sewn at heart level on the early silk shirts. For many decades after that no club logo was displayed at all, apart from the devil in the early 1980s. The club badge made its definitive appearance on the match strips in the 1995–96 season, in a form that has remained largely unchanged since. For much of the club’s history, the shirt itself carried the city cross and the stripes rather than a club badge.

Design and documentation.

A football club’s identity is usually built from a small set of parts that supporters learn to read at a glance. The crest sits at the centre: a shield, roundel or monogram that may carry a city emblem, a founding year, a letter cipher or an animal. Crests are redrawn every few decades, often to simplify detail for screens, embroidery and small sizes, and each redraw tends to prompt debate among supporters about what should be kept.

Colour pairs carry as much weight as the crest. Two colours, set as vertical stripes, hoops, halves or a plain shirt with contrasting trim, can identify a club from the far side of a stadium. Kit makers interpret those colours each season, adding their own marks on the chest and sleeves, so a club’s look is always shared between its own badge and a manufacturer’s logo.

Beyond the official marks, supporters add a third layer: banners, flags and choreographies painted in club colours, with hand-made lettering that often echoes the crest. For a design guide, the useful lesson is how few elements carry the whole identity, and how carefully each one is protected.

Stripe width as a design decision.

The home kit has kept one pattern for more than a century: a red and black striped shirt with white shorts and, for long stretches, black socks. What has moved is the width of the stripes. Wikipedia says the earliest shirts of the 1900s had thin stripes, that the stripes were widened in the 1910s and stayed that way until the late 1950s, and that the 1960s brought a return to thin stripes that lasted until the 1985–86 season, with a brief spell of medium stripes between 1980 and 1982.

The clearest example of the kit being redesigned for the screen came in 1986–87. Wikipedia says that under the new owner, Silvio Berlusconi, the stripes were brought back to a medium width and the socks were changed to white to match the shorts. The aim was a more elegant look and a shirt that read as distinctly red and black on television, where thin stripes could look like a plain red or brown shirt from a distance. From 1998–99 the kit began to change every season. The away kit has been white throughout, often with a single red and black stripe.

Kit makers have carried the stripes in turn. Wikipedia lists the Italian company Lotto, then Adidas, whose deal ended early, effective 30 June 2018, and now Puma as the club’s supplier. In 2022 the club announced a partnership with the Italian streetwear label Off-White, which produced a fourth kit for the 2024–25 season.

The stadium is part of the same story. Wikipedia says the San Siro was privately built with funding from the club’s president of the time, Piero Pirelli, opened with a match on 19 September 1926, was sold to the city in 1935 and is officially named the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza.

For a design guide, AC Milan shows how a club can rely on a colour pair and a city flag for decades before adding a formal badge to the shirt. Compare it with Puma, the club’s current kit supplier, and Inter Milan, the club formed by the 1908 split. For this guide we use Rossoneri red, devil black and Ambrose white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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