Saturday, June 24, 2006

Messing with a good thing

So our Premier Dalton McGuinty could've avoided the mess he stepped in this week, but chose instead to keep on walkin', leaving a nice, dirty trail behind.

The pooch that left this mess? Whoever thought it was a good idea to spend $220,000 to redesign the logo for the Government of Ontario!

picture courtesy the Toronto Star

Now, leaving aside the extravagant cost (an undergrad graphics designer could come up with something like that for a few hundred dollars, probably, remember THIS that was much more loved than "Toronto Unlimited"), the possible partisanship in awarding the design contract for this thing, and the possibile similarities with Liberal or NDP logos (because there's enough people talking about that), was there even a need to redesign the logo?

Right now, the logo's well known, simple and effective. You could even say that it's iconic. Now, the question becomes, is the new logo so much better that people would remark that it represents Ontario that much better than before?

Probably not. There was never a need to rebrand the government logo. It is not a business firm that needs to stay 'current' and 'edgy' for brand recognition. The government will not collapse because of a lack of it, as much as people may want. The government is here to stay.

Now, as of right now, the government homepage still uses the old logo. I wonder how long it'll take them to revamp all the websites? How much chaos will that create?

What an idiotic idea. They need to repay us, and quick. Or at the very least, whoever approved the idea, have them take money out of their own pocket and put it back into government coffers.

The design firm won't return the government check for sure. But we sure as hell shouldn't have to pay for this nonsense.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a point of clarification, I didn't think that it looked like either the Lib or NDP logo. I just noted with bemusement that the company that scored this little design gig became the Designers of Choice because of their loyal service to the Liberal Party :)

blackhole said...

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you thought it looked like either party's logo. Your post was included was because it was one of the few I found, and you traced it back to when they first put out the RFP, which is worth noting, since none of the other stories did.

mcwads said...

Shocking. In terms of costs though, forget redesigning web pages...think of the cost of changing all the signs, cards, and documents issued by the government.

McGuinty is a baffoon.