City of Vancouver Redoing Three-Month Old Brand-Back to the Logo-Part Two

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Instead of concentrating on issues like housing diversity, seniors needs, and affordability the City of Vancouver council is wading back into predictable waters. The Mayor wants to change the City’s logo once again in an elongated process sure to take up lots of staff time. As Wanyee Li reports in the Metro News, the wordmark approved last February may be rescinded today “in response to public outcry after the original proposed version was revealed. Residents mocked the gotham-fonted logo due to its simplicity and $8,000 price tag while local designers signed an open letter that criticized the process used to create the new logo.”
As Price Tags previously reported, this Council has turfed the Vancouver logo used throughout the Olympics for a rather bare bones version of the same, in Vancouver Canuck hockey colours. Price Tags also talked about the original logo and gave a bit of background in a previous post. But never mind, it appears this is a public involvement exercise and Mayor Robertson is going to let the public “provide feedback on a new wordmark”.

“The new process, if approved Tuesday, will involve both public feedback as well as collaboration with the Graphic Designers of Canada, according to the motion…Local designers have said the original bill, $8,000 was too low and that top-of-the-line city logos could cost as much as $200,000 to design.”

You can take a look at the motion to Council put forward by Mayor Robertson on this wordmark process here. It is not called what it is, which is changing the City’s logo. It is called “Modernizing the City’s Visual Identity”. The reason for the change according to the Council motion is that “Vancouver’s last visual identity was created over a decade ago, prior to the need for social media-friendly graphics and key City policies including the City of Reconciliation”.
You can see the old logo and the “new” $8,000 dollar three-month old logo about to be booted below.The budget for the wordmarking exercise will be set after the Council meeting, but won’t include the hours of staff time this process takes. Stay tuned.