Four founders in a park, a light blue shirt, and a darker one from 1921.

Rangers began with a conversation in a park. English Wikipedia says the club was formed by four founders — the brothers Moses McNeil and Peter McNeil, Peter Campbell and William McBeath — who met at West End Park, now Kelvingrove Park, in March 1872 and discussed forming a football club. Their first match, in May that year, was a goalless friendly against Callander on the Fleshers’ Haugh area of Glasgow Green. Wikipedia names David Hill as a founder member too.

The name is simply Rangers. Wikipedia notes that the club is often called Glasgow Rangers, but that this has never been its official name. The club held its first annual meeting and elected officials in 1873, and was incorporated as The Rangers Football Club Ltd on 27 May 1899.

The club moved around before it settled. Wikipedia lists Fleshers’ Haugh, then Burnbank Park in Kelvinbridge, then Kinning Park for about ten years from the mid-1870s, then Cathkin Park from February 1887, before the first Ibrox Park opened in the south-west of the city for the following season.

The shirt was lighter at first. Wikipedia says the club colours are royal blue, white and red, but for much of its first forty-eight years Rangers played in a plain lighter blue home shirt. The only break was a four-season spell from 1879 when the side wore light blue and white hoops. Rangers moved to royal blue in 1921 and has worn a royal blue home shirt every year since.

The rest of the strip arrived in stages. Black socks were first worn in 1883, dropped for a time and became a fixture from 1896; when red turn-downs were added to the socks in 1904, Wikipedia says, the strip began to look like the modern home kit of royal blue shirts, white shorts and black socks with red tops. Sometimes the shorts and socks change, with white socks or an all-blue combination.

Change kits have varied far more. Wikipedia says the club’s original change strip, used between 1876 and 1879, was all white with blue and white hooped socks and a light blue six-pointed star on the chest. White and red have been the usual colours for later alternate strips, with dark and light blue also common, and a third kit was introduced in 1994.

An RFC scroll on the shirt, a lion and a motto on everything else.

Rangers has two official crests. Wikipedia says the original scroll crest, a monogram of the overlapping letters RFC, appears on the club’s strips, while a lion rampant crest is used by the media, on merchandise and on official documents. Both have changed in small ways since they were introduced.

The scroll is the older of the two. It is believed to have been used since the club’s formation in 1872, although the oldest surviving piece of memorabilia carrying it dates from the 1881–82 season. It was replaced in 1959 by the lion rampant crest, which showed a lion rampant, an old-style football and the club’s motto, “Ready,” shortened from “Aye Ready,” Scots for “always ready,” all inside the words Rangers Football Club.

The lion crest has been redrawn several times. Wikipedia says it was modernised in 1968, keeping the lion, the name, the motto and the ball; updated slightly again in the early 1990s; and updated once more in 2020 to the current circular version. It has never featured prominently on the playing strip.

The scroll went back on the shirt in the same year as the first modernisation. In 1968 it appeared on the chest of the club shirt for the first time, while the modernised lion crest remained the official logo, and from the 1978–79 season it was also placed on the shorts. Its framing has varied: between 1990 and 1994 the words Rangers Football Club sat above it and the “Ready” motto below, and between 1997 and 1999 the scroll sat inside a shield.

Anniversaries brought special versions. Wikipedia says the team wore a special crest on 8 December 2012, in a home match against Stirling Albion, to mark the club’s 140th anniversary, with “1872–2012” above the scroll and “140 years” below. In 2021 the club unveiled a 150th anniversary crest for the 2021–22 season.

The club also has a costumed figure. Broxi Bear, a brown bear with blue inner ears and nose wearing a Rangers strip, is the official mascot; his name is an anagram of Ibrox, and he first appeared on 13 November 1993. Wikipedia says he was later joined by Roxi and Boris, who were reintroduced at Ibrox on 9 September 2017.

Clubs, crests and colours.

Football club identities tend to be built from a small set of recurring parts, and each part carries its own design job. A motto, often written in Latin or in the club’s home language, is usually set on a ribbon or band around the crest, where it has to stay legible at the size of a phone screen as well as on a stadium façade.

Animal emblems are another common device. A bird, a big cat or a mythical creature gives a club a mascot, a nickname and a shape that can be drawn as a full heraldic figure, a flat silhouette or a costumed character on matchdays. The same animal may appear in several drawings at once, each tuned to a different medium.

Stadium names work as a second brand. Some grounds carry a historic place name, some honour a person and some are sold to a sponsor for a fixed term, which changes the signage, the wordmark and the way broadcasters refer to the venue. Kit sponsors add a third layer: a shirt front shared with a partner’s logo means the club’s colours and crest have to hold their own beside another company’s mark, season after season.

A Leitch stadium, a 2012 restructuring and American owners from 2025.

Ibrox is the club’s permanent address. Wikipedia says the stadium in its current form was designed by the architect Archibald Leitch, who also worked on Old Trafford and Highbury, and was inaugurated on 30 December 1899 with a match against Hearts. The main stand by Leitch opened in 1929, and the stadium is a Category B listed building. The club trains at Auchenhowie in Milngavie, a centre completed in 2001 and originally named Murray Park after the former chairman Sir David Murray.

Control passed between business owners over the twentieth century. Wikipedia says no single shareholding exceeded half the club until 1985, when the Lawrence Group took a majority; in November 1988 the head of that group sold out to David Murray, who listed the company on the stock exchange in 2000. Craig Whyte bought Murray’s shares in May 2011.

The company behind the club was restructured in 2012. On 14 June 2012, after creditors rejected a proposed CVA and the old company entered liquidation, a new company formed by a consortium led by Charles Green bought its business and assets, and that company, now The Rangers Football Club Ltd, has run the club since, Wikipedia says.

The latest owners are American. Sky Sports reported on 30 May 2025 that a consortium led by the healthcare executive Andrew Cavenagh and 49ers Enterprises, the investment arm of the San Francisco 49ers, had completed its takeover with a controlling stake after approval from the Scottish FA. Cavenagh became chairman and Paraag Marathe, president of 49ers Enterprises, vice-chairman, while Patrick Stewart continued as chief executive.

The kit has had a named maker since 1978, when Rangers signed with Umbro, and a shirt sponsor since 1984. Wikipedia notes that when Rangers played French sides in 1996–97 and 1997–98 the team wore the Center Parcs name instead of its usual lager sponsor because of a French ban on alcohol advertising.

Rangers shares Glasgow with Celtic FC, which wears green and white hoops, and the two clubs first met in a friendly on 28 May 1888.

For a design guide, Rangers FC shows how a club can run a monogram and a heraldic crest side by side, one for the shirt and one for everything else, and keep the older mark closest to the players. Compare Celtic FC, whose clover badge sits above hoops, and Manchester United, whose crest carries a ship and a red devil. For this guide we use royal blue, shorts white and turn-down red with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Rangers FC’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.