New Corporate Identity For Melbourne
The Melbourne City Council in Australia, hometown of SitePoint, recently revealed their new logo design for the city. The new logo features a big, bold M.
The logo was designed by giant American branding company Landor Associates, who also re-designed the Coca Cola logo on its 100th Anniversary. The new Melbourne logo comes in several variations and in some versions appears almost jewel-like, or maybe for some critics, like cheap glass.
The official blurb from the Lord Mayor of Melbourne;
The new design will become an icon for Melbourne, synonymous with the modern, vibrant, cool city Melbourne is today and will continue to be in the future.
Melbourne’s previous logo (see below), which was designed about 15 years ago, was a leaf, and considered to be somewhat weak.
Needless to say, these things don’t come cheap and there have been expressions of concern that the new logo has cost an awful lot. The Mayor of the city revealed that the preliminary research cost Melbourne City Council $91,000, while the final design cost $148,000. (I’m making a mental note here to charge more for logo design).
The Lord Mayor has defended the cost, declaring that savings would be made in the long run by using the new logo. The old leaf logo would be gradually phased out, saving the city about $90,000 per year.
The logo is just part of the overall branding, and is now in place on the City Council’s website, stationery, brochures and will be appearing all over the city.
Personally, I like the dark blue multi-faceted version, but I’m not too keen on the flat colors or the outline version. It is a big improvement on the old leaf though.
The Australian Herald Sun newspaper asked local design students to produce a logo to beat the new expensive M, and here are a few of the logos produced. What do you think? Are any of the freebies better?
So what do you think of the new Melbourne logo, like it or loathe it? Or maybe just indifferent? What do you think about the costs involved with designing and developing a new corporate identity like this?
