Melbourne Logo

So Melbourne has a new logo. Perhaps more disturbing than the logo itself is its clumsy birth into the public spotlight. Within hours of its release, readers polls popped up across the Melbourne mediascape asking readers ‘Do you like the logo?’. If the logo is indeed a product of massive market research and development then why isn’t the intellectual or conceptual basis for the new logo stated? We would like to know how the logo will be implemented and address all the practical requirements that a well considered design should. The public, angry or accepting, does at the very least deserve this.

In order to steer clear of banal criticism (including the reaction of local graphic designers), the public introduction of the logo shouldn’t be left in the hands of inarticulate politicians and bureaucrats who describe the old logo was ‘a bit daggy, designed at a time when he was still listening to MC Hammer’. Once again, the argument is reduced to flipant remarks on style and fashion.

As if this isn’t bad enough, the binary nature of public polls (it’s either very important or an absolute waste of money) further reduces the debate to the lowest common denominator.

We all remember from our earliest school days there was always one little sad kid in class who always tried to be cool but never got there. This new logo’s stated objective of being ‘cool’ is of course completely self-defeating and only goes to reinforce public perceptions of graphic designers role as stylists, window dressers or turd polishers. This really does us all a great disservice. It’s about time we created a more mature way of articulating our design process. The alternative is to be perpetually positioned in the public eye somewhere between real estate agents and used car salesmen.