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Converting club crests to emoji-friendly assets for mobile fantasy apps

UUnknown

2026-02-12

10 min read

Practical, automatable workflow to convert SVG club crests into emoji-style PNG fallbacks, pair with regional flags, and ensure crisp display across DPRs.

Stop ugly club crests from breaking your fantasy app UI — a practical pipeline

Hook: If your fantasy app shows inconsistent club crests — blurry at 2x DPR, misaligned next to flags, or unreadable at 16px — you're losing clarity and trust. This guide gives a pragmatic, automation-ready workflow (SVG → emoji-style PNG fallbacks, pairing with regional indicators, testing, and tooling) so club crests look crisp and consistent in FPL and score apps in 2026.

Why this matters in 2026

Platforms and device screen densities keep evolving: high-DPR displays are common, mobile OSes increasingly favor vector and variable-color rendering, and users expect emoji-sized badges to be instantly legible. Late 2025 and early 2026 trends show wider adoption of vector color formats (COLR/CPAL and SVG color glyphs) in browsers and mobile toolchains — but app UIs still rely on raster fallbacks to guarantee uniform display across Android, iOS and web. The result: you need a repeatable pipeline that outputs optimized, emoji-like PNGs at multiple sizes, paired gracefully with country flags (regional indicators) and tested across devices.

Overview: The workflow at a glance

Source SVG preparation — sanitize and normalize crest SVGs (colors, strokes, non-scaling stroke behavior, remove raster images).
Visual tuning for emoji size — apply padding, simplify details, add non-scaling strokes and fallback shapes.
Rasterization & export — generate PNG fallbacks at a canonical set of sizes (including 2x/3x DPR), plus WebP/AVIF if desired.
Pairing with regional indicators — render text or emoji flag pairs next to crest images; or bake flag into a combined image for single-sprite usage.
Testing & validation — visual regression tests, platform checks, and accessibility metadata.
Automation — integrate into CI with reproducible scripts, versioning, and a manifest for runtime selection.

1. Prepare and sanitize your source SVGs

Start from the highest-quality vector you have. Many club crests come from partners or scraped sources; they often contain hidden layers, embedded bitmaps, or styles that scale poorly.

Use SVGO to normalize and remove metadata: it makes the file size smaller and reduces rasterization surprises.
Convert embedded images to vectors or remove them if they won't be legible at emoji sizes.
Add vector-effect: non-scaling-stroke to strokes that should keep constant visual weight at small sizes. Not all renderers respect it, but resvg and modern toolchains do.
Define an explicit viewBox and ensure paths are centered and use consistent units.

Example svgo command:

npx svgo --multipass crest-source.svg -o crest-sanitized.svg

Best practices inside the SVG

Limit fine details: remove hairline elements that will disappear at 16–24px.
Use flat fills: gradients and textures often fail to read at tiny sizes — replace with solid or subtle gradients tuned to contrast.
Maintain safe padding: add ~8–12% padding around the crest art so it doesn't clip when rendered with rounded backgrounds.
Color profile: assume sRGB and keep colors in a palette consistent with emoji aesthetics (slightly desaturated and high contrast).

2. Design rules for emoji-style look

Emoji glyphs are simple, bold, and legible at very small sizes. Apply these rules so your crest feels native when displayed inline with emoji and regional flags.

Round corners and consistent padding: use a circular or rounded rectangular mask for the final PNG to match emoji shapes.
Outline for legibility: add a subtle outline (stroke) with non-scaling behavior or programmatically stroke expand to preserve contrast.
Optical scaling: for very small sizes, create simplified glyph variants (e.g., removing tiny text or ornaments).
Shadow & lift: a tiny drop shadow or inner bevel can help the crest read on variable backgrounds, but keep it subtle.

3. Rasterization: tools and commands you can use

There are many ways to rasterize SVG into PNGs. Use fast, deterministic tools in CI: resvg (Rust), librsvg, ImageMagick, and Sharp (Node.js) are reliable. Resvg gives excellent fidelity and respects SVG features like vector-effect.

Recommended sizes (for in-app emoji/score UIs)

16px, 20px, 24px — inline lists and very small badges
32px, 48px — team list rows and scoreboard items
64px, 96px, 128px — team pages and splash areas
256px, 512px — store assets, high-res exports (optional)

Include 1x, 2x, and 3x variants if you support multiple DPRs (i.e., generate 32, 64, 96 for a 16px baseline).

Example: resvg + sharp pipeline (bash + Node)

# rasterize with resvg (fast, vector-accurate)
resvg crest-sanitized.svg -w 128 -h 128 -o tmp/crest-128.png

# generate a set of sizes with sharp (Node)
node -e "const sharp=require('sharp');
const sizes=[16,20,24,32,48,64,96,128,256];
for(const s of sizes){
  sharp('tmp/crest-128.png')
    .resize(s)
    .png({quality:90})
    .toFile(`dist/png/${s}/crest.png`);
}"

Alternative: use sharp to render SVG directly — useful if you need programmatic masks and background fills:

const sharp = require('sharp');
const fs = require('fs');

async function exportSizes(svgPath){
  const sizes=[16,20,24,32,48,64,96,128];
  const svg = fs.readFileSync(svgPath);
  for(const s of sizes){
    await sharp(svg)
      .resize(s, s)
      .png({quality:95})
      .toFile(`dist/png/${s}/crest.png`);
  }
}

exportSizes('crest-sanitized.svg');

4. Pairing crests with regional indicators (flags)

The conventional way to show country flags is with Unicode regional indicator pairs (two code points representing an ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code). For inline text you usually place a PNG crest next to the platform-rendered flag emoji. Two strategies work well:

Runtime pairing: Keep the crest as an inline image and render the flag as a native emoji using the country code — this adapts to the platform's emoji style.
Baked pairing: Combine crest + flag into a single PNG for consistent cross-platform appearance (useful in notifications, images, or very small badges).

Compute a flag emoji from ISO code (algorithm)

Take an ISO alpha-2 code (e.g., GB, FR) and map each ASCII letter to a regional indicator symbol by adding 0x1F1E6 to (letter - 'A'). In JavaScript:

function flagEmojiFromISO(alpha2){
  return [...alpha2.toUpperCase()].map(ch =>
    String.fromCodePoint(0x1F1E6 + ch.charCodeAt(0) - 65)
  ).join('');
}

console.log(flagEmojiFromISO('GB')); // outputs the UK flag emoji (platform dependent)

Android / iOS inline examples

Keep the flag as emoji and place an image span for the crest. Example snippets:

Android (Kotlin) — ImageSpan in a TextView

val flag = flagEmojiFromISO("GB")
val text = "$flag  "
val spannable = SpannableString(text + " ")
val drawable = ContextCompat.getDrawable(context, R.drawable.crest_24)
drawable?.setBounds(0,0,drawable.intrinsicWidth, drawable.intrinsicHeight)
val span = ImageSpan(drawable!!, ImageSpan.ALIGN_BOTTOM)
spannable.setSpan(span, text.length, text.length+1, Spannable.SPAN_EXCLUSIVE_EXCLUSIVE)
textView.text = spannable

iOS (Swift) — NSTextAttachment

let flag = flagEmojiFromISO("GB")
let attributed = NSMutableAttributedString(string: flag + " ")
let attachment = NSTextAttachment()
attachment.image = UIImage(named: "crest_24")
attachment.bounds = CGRect(x:0,y:-3,width:24,height:24)
attributed.append(NSAttributedString(attachment: attachment))
label.attributedText = attributed

5. Accessibility, metadata and manifest design

Don't forget non-visual consumers and runtime selection:

Provide accessible names: alt, contentDescription, or aria-label with the club name and country.
Include a small JSON manifest per crest with fields: slug, country, aspectRatio, dominantColor, recommendedPadding, and available sizes.
Expose a runtime helper to pick the best asset for the device DPR and available bandwidth (prefer WebP/AVIF where supported).

Sample manifest entry:

{
  "slug": "manchester-united",
  "country": "GB",
  "sizes": [16,24,32,48,64,128],
  "dominantColor": "#DA291C",
  "recommendedPadding": 0.12
}

6. Testing & validation

Automate visual testing and platform checks so a crest doesn't regress when designers update art.

Visual regression: use Puppeteer + Pixelmatch, Percy, or Cypress visual testing to compare generated PNGs against approved baselines across sizes and DPRs.
Contrast & legibility: run scripts that detect tiny isolated shapes and flag potential artifacts. Tools like svgo + custom rules can detect tiny paths.
Platform smoke tests: run your app on a matrix of Android/iOS + web to verify emoji alignment and baseline tweaks.
Accessibility checks: ensure each crest has correct alt text and is announced sensibly by screen readers.

Example visual regression job (CI)

# GitHub Actions job snippet (concept)
name: crest-build
on: [push]
jobs:
  build-assets:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run build:crests # runs resvg/sharp + outputs images
      - run: npm run test:visual # puppeteer + pixelmatch

7. Packaging, caching, and runtime selection

Keep run-time downloads small and deterministic:

Host assets on a CDN and use far-future caching with hashed filenames.
Serve WebP/AVIF where supported and fallback to PNG otherwise.
Use a lightweight manifest with URLs keyed by size and DPR.
For offline-first mobile apps, bundle a minimal set of sizes and fetch others on demand.

Example manifest mapping (runtime selection):

{
  "crest": {
    "16": "/cdn/crests/manchester-united/16.png",
    "32": "/cdn/crests/manchester-united/32.png",
    "64": "/cdn/crests/manchester-united/64.png",
    "webp": {
      "32": "/cdn/crests/manchester-united/32.webp"
    }
  }
}

8. Advanced strategies and future-proofing (2026+)

Trends in late 2025 and early 2026 favor vector-first experiences. To keep your pipeline future-ready:

Support COLR/CPAL: if you publish a custom vector emoji font, consider COLR v1/v2 glyphs for scalable, small-bundle vector color glyphs. Many browsers and platforms improved support in 2024–2025, and adoption continues.
Maintain simplified variants: auto-generate a tiny 'glyph' version of each crest optimized for 12–20px display — these are not just scaled downs, but simplified artwork.
Use programmatic hinting: for small sizes, programmatically adjust stroke thickness and remove micro-details during rasterization.
Automate accessibility metadata: generate localized names and fallback strings during the build so screen readers remain accurate across locales. See tiny-team support patterns like Tiny Teams, Big Impact for ideas on lightweight operational workflows.

Platforms will keep adding richer vector emoji support; but across-device consistency in 2026 still depends on robust PNG fallbacks and disciplined pipelines.

Tooling checklist

SVG sanitization: SVGO, custom lint rules
Rasterization: resvg, sharp, ImageMagick (as fallback)
Optimization: oxipng, cwebp, avif
Visual tests: Puppeteer + Pixelmatch, Percy
CI automation: GitHub Actions / GitLab pipelines
Runtime mapping: small JSON manifest + CDN + HTTP cache headers
Grapheme handling (if you embed emoji in text): grapheme-splitter for JS

Common pitfalls and how to fix them

Blurry icons on high-DPR screens: ensure you generate 2x/3x PNGs and pick them by DPR or use vector when possible.
Tiny strokes disappear: use non-scaling strokes or expand strokes in the vector and simplify at smaller sizes.
Flags look different across platforms: use native emoji flags at runtime or bake a flag into a combined PNG if you need consistent branding.
Large asset bundle: keep a minimal set bundled; lazy-load larger fallbacks when necessary.

Actionable checklist to implement this week

Audit your crest SVGs for hidden raster layers and run SVGO on all of them.
Add vector-effect: non-scaling-stroke and explicit padding to each crest SVG.
Build a small Node script that rasterizes sizes 16–128 via resvg/sharp and outputs a manifest JSON.
Create a CI job that runs visual tests comparing newly generated sizes to approved baselines.
Implement runtime selection logic (DPR-aware) and test on a physical device matrix.

Conclusion & next steps

Takeaways: For robust, emoji-friendly club crests in fantasy and scoreboard apps in 2026, treat SVGs as the single source of truth, generate optical-size PNG fallbacks at multiple DPRs, pair crests with platform flags at runtime (or bake when needed), and automate visual & accessibility tests. This approach balances the advantages of modern vector formats with the pragmatic need for consistent cross-platform raster fallbacks.

Call-to-action: Ready to standardize your crest pipeline? Download our reference repo (SVG lint rules, resvg+sharp scripts, CI snippets and example manifest), or message us with your crest set and we’ll provide a gratis audit and asset sample optimized for your app’s target densities.

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