I’ve seen people describe this as looking like the Albertson’s logo, and like a stylized freeway overpass.
The whole total project cost is an estimated $1,117,558 and is a part of the Austin Strategic 2023 Plan approved back in 2018. Here’s the breakdown of how that money is being spent:
Brand Vendors: $640,000
Public Awareness Campaign: $115,000
Consolidated city-wide design software for all departments: $75,582
Support staff and legal counsel – salary and benefits for a Brand Project Manager (temporary City employee) and external legal review: $186,976
A friend of the blog, who wishes to remain monogamous anonymous sent around a rant on the subject. I asked for his permission to republish it here, and it follows after the jump. I’ve edited it slightly at his request to remove possibly identifying information.
Now that the City of Austin has revealed the logo… which they apparently spent $1.1 MILLION on, I can freely say how absolutely stupid the logo, and the thought that the City of Austin ‘needed’ a logo, is.
It’s very stupid. It’s a waste of money (let me guess how many non-Austin artists got money from this), and it’s going to waste much more money before the city is done paying to replace the existing branding on… ALMOST EVERYTHING. CoA buildings. CoA vehicles. The paper systems for CoA agencies. EVERY… button down shirt, polo, ballcap, jacket worn by the employees of the City of Austin utilities, sanitation, and other departments.
I know of no one who had any problem connecting with the City of Austin that stemmed from the previous branding.
https://www.austintexas.gov/page/austin-brand
It looks like THE LOGO FROM A DEFUNCT PAPER MILL.
https://www.kxan.com/news/austin-unveils-new-city-brand-logo-redesign/
City Manager: “there is a very real business need for a unified brand”
We have branding. It looks official. It does not look like a GRADE SCHOOL STUDENT ORGANIZATION logo, like the Austin Logo does.
“We want our community members to be able to identify members of our team as city of Austin employees and trust the services we provide”
We have that identifiability. No one thinks the guys picking up my recyclables or checking my electric meter are FROM SOME OTHER CITY. Because why?
This is such BS, and hopefully derails any attempt to crack any more money out of homeowners. The City of Austin spends enough on horsehockey that is not central to running a city, and this is a very IDENTIFIABLE BRAND for the kind of excess and waste that our City Council thinks is important to the City of Austin. Oh we don’t have money for four firefighters per engine, we don’t have money to keep public safety a going concern, but we have a wavy A with a shadow-A lurking behind it to represent the way stuff works around here. So maybe it does make sense, there’s the blue A representing the sad blue face of the city and a green A working the green behind the scenes.
Ahem.