Steve McGookinWhat do you think of the Council’s new brand identity – reportedly created at a cost of up to £50,000 – to represent the city to the world?
Stephen Nolan’s BBC Radio Ulster show this morning leaked the design of a new logo which will appear in marketing material to promote Belfast in the city and across the world.
Nolan said the design had been passed to his show by “a whistleblower from the council” who thought it was “appalling.”
Reaction to the design – an outline text “Belfast” across what was described as a red “starburst” shape, apparently representative of the shape of the city – among callers and on social media was mixed. The News Letter reported that the new design had been “compared to an existing one used by BBC Radio’s Across The Line” music show.
Other comparisons were less flattering, ranging from “an explosion in a paintbox” to “a two-year old could have done a better job.” One tweet said, simply: “It’s sh*t but it’s our sh*t and we won’t have a bad word said about the place.”
Listen to the 30-minute segment about the logo from this morning’s show here, or download the full show’s podcast here.
Cllr Jim Rodgers defended the expenditure on the logo, telling Nolan it was the product of a lot of hard work and there would always be people who wanted to “knock” efforts to promote the city, before the two men got into bantering about their respective weights.
According to the Belfast Telegraph, the council has said the “statement behind the logo is ‘energy unleashed’” and the new logo will “gradually” replace the old Belfast ‘B’ brand, which was launched in 2008. As with that previous logo, it appears that the colour scheme is variable depending on its use. The further cost of replacing existing signage and letterheads bearing the “old” logo remains unclear.
The Nolan Show said that the council had told them: “The success of any city brand should be measured by its use by its city partners. To date, even in its infancy, several key stakeholders in the city, such as Translink, Visit Belfast, have all used the new brand.”
There were plenty of marketing and design buzzwords floating around during today’s discussion, but what do you think? What does it say to you? Does it remind you of anything? Do you think your money was well spent? Do you care?
Let us know…
Also published on Medium.