The release of the new Ontario trillium designed by Toronto based Bendsimon Byrne has caused a lot of ruckus in Ontario and the industry this week, and everyone seems to have an opinion.
Norman Hathaway, designer of the old trillium, called it “atrocious”. Keith Rushton, professor at OCAD, said “It’s a very aggressive, hostile logo” and is somewhat doubtful it will reproduce well as smaller sizes due to the complexity. Even local MPP and NDP leader Howard Hampton is getting in on the act. “How Dalton McGuinty can justify giving a Liberal-friendly ad firm $219,000 to make the provincial logo look like the Ontario Liberal Party’s logo is simply beyond the pale”.
The whole controversy has brought up two common issues in the industry though, devaluation and design-by-committee.
The design industry is often devalued by the general public, which is made clear in the Toronto Star editorials assertion that design is something school children can do before they go to collage or get a real job. Most people will have trouble with the price tag on a job like this too, $219,000 seems like a lot of money for something when you could just use some clip art from MS Office, or have little Billy throw something together for you for $20.
Designing for governments is often design-by-committee, and anytime you step into a situation where design is a committee process of non-designers it visibly suffers from it. When Mr. Hathaway designed the original logo he had to fight with ideas coming at him from every MPP about cogs and rivers, ect, but luckily he ended up going with his gut and produced one of the more iconic logos in Canadian design history.
I can’t say I hate what has been dubbed “The Jacuzzi” logo as much as everyone else seems too, I can see why they wanted a change and the direction they were heading in, but I can’t say I like it either.
I liked the old logo personally, it had gained a lot of brand equity in the last forty two years, and despite the ‘94 and ‘04 modifications it presented very well. The assertion that it’s the synthesis of the Liberal Party’s logo (to the right) is a slight reach though, and an obvious attempt at trying to make this into a political issue for the sake of being in “opposition” rather then a design issue.
But considering how often the old logo was changed in such short time I don’t think we’ll have too long to wait for this new logo to go through the ringer again.
