In 2008 Fred Smeijers and his company Type Tailors redesigned the logo of Dutch electronics brand Philips, as shown above. The differences are small, but impactful, and it was he first time the wordmark of Philips had been reconsidered since 1968.
At the time, the Philips logo was also featured prominently on the shirts of football club PSV, which was founded by Philips in 1913. As such, the company served as PSV's title sponsor from 1982 untill 2016, when under the leadership of CEO Frans van Houten a decision was made to instead promote the company through faulty health devices.
In either case, there was a brief eight year period during which the redesigned logo was featured on the shirts of the football club PSV. Football shirts are a lucurative market and for more than forty years the Philips logo on the front had been an icon for the succesful club.
It is therefore unsurprising to find that even today a number of shirts can be found that sport the Philips logo.
The above two shirts were Adidas-branded reissues of championship winning shirts from the 80's and 90's. Both these shirts were found on secondhand clothing websites, and what's interesting is that the logo used on both of them is the redesigned logo from 2008, as can be most easily recognised by the the slight slant at the end of the 'L'.
This makes me think that these shirts are counterfeit, given that the 'PSV retro shirt 88-89' that is sold directly from the PSV store today uses the old, period-accurate, logo, as can be seen in the bottom left. It seems hard to imagine that a company the size of Adidas would aquire a license to re-release such a shirt and not bother to consult the other major stakeholder about using the right logo.
As an interesting footnote, it must be mentioned that during the last matches that PSV played with Philips as their title sponsor, they used a kit with the first PSV logo and a 'retro' shape. The Philips logo however was the updated wordmark, keeping in line with other Philips branded products.
