Wolverhampton’s tartan was a joy to design, indeed it nearly designed itself such is the clarity with which the city can represent itself symbolically and visually. The wonderful orange-gold that represents the city just had to be the strongest influence of the design. This did require certain considerations to be thought through – whilst I am in no way troubled by it being an unusual tartan colour (indeed I think this is great as it really makes it distinctive) I had to be careful to make the colour work. It would be accidentally very easy to make quite a garish design when working with such a bold colour in what can easily become a messy pattern.

Wolverhampton Tartan

To counter the vibrancy of the gold to some extent I employed the black that is used as an accent colour in the Wolves football team kit. Touches of red help the colours blend but I aimed not to overuse it for fear of making the design over complicated and fussy.

It is bold, but restrained from being overbearing. The gold really lends itself to being a part of this proud symbol and the tartan pattern naturally lends itself to the shape of the cross. The result feeds off the near branding consistency that Wolverhampton has organically developed over hundreds of years.
As with the flag for Stourbridge it seemed like quite a difficult task to consolidate and condense the wealth of symbolism that the town has into a meaningful whole. As such I decided to use the flag that I had designed as the main point of inspiration – thus allowing me to draw on the wide ranging motifs I had used there.

Stourbridge Tartan

Similarly this also allowed me to include the colour red, else a blue and white tartan could run the risk of looking a little too close to Halesowen’s already established tartan. Not necessarily a problem you understand but as the two towns share a proximity as well as a rivalry, a bit more visual separation between the two helps differentiate their identity rather than blur it.

I took the idea of the red and navy blue quarters as the basis for the tartan pattern here and then added white and pale blue onto this. Overall this does give it a heraldic theme but the blues and whites add an aquatic ‘feel’ to the design that hints at the river and the countryside around the town. The stripes themselves reflect charges in the design of the flag, and the white between red and navy quarters represents the titular bridge of the town.