Statement Re New Super City Logo

Media Release
April 26, 2010

Statement From Designers Institute of NZ Re New Super City Logo

The Designers Institute of New Zealand (DINZ) says that it is essential that the new Auckland Transition Agency engages a professional design agency as soon as possible to ensure that the new Super City logo is developed as a “sophisticated, contemporary and effective” visual identity and subsequent brand for the city.

Sean McGarry, president of dinz, the national organization representing professional designers, said choosing a new Super City logo through a public competition was not a process that dinz had ever “envisaged or endorsed.”

However, now that the logo design had been announced, McGarry said it was important that professional designers were employed to translate the design into a more current and distinctive logo.

McGarry said that visual identity and brand development was the result of complex strategy work and design iteration.

“Good design, while it might appear to be simple, is usually the result of a process of in-depth research, conceptual development and refinement and then implementation of the finalised design as a complete visual identity and branding programme.”

McGarry cites the example of the new Melbourne logo released in July, 2009, a stylized M which can be used in a number of colour ways and identity lock-ups depending on its application. The Melbourne logo was designed by leading design and brand identity company, Landor, and was the result of a separate research process before the design work was even undertaken.

Said McGarry: “It is dynamic, effective cutting edge design backed up by a robust design process.”

While dinz said the new Auckland Supercity logo had some distinctive features, such as the environmental and cultural themes of pohutakawa and koro, the institute said the design was generic and influenced by 70’s modernist design , “definitely not contemporary and doesn’t make a strong statement about Auckland, its people and its future.”

Mr McGarry said the competition process had not been “what we would have envisaged as the industry body of professional designers”, but he urged the organisers now to employ professional designers, so that “we can end up with a sophisticated, modern and recognisable symbol of Auckland.”

ENDS

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