In February Amsterdam’s new
‘hit the return key’ logo upset quite a few taxpayers, and now it’s The Hague’s turn to weather the outrage about their new logo as it is already dangling in failure.

The new logo was unveiled last month, cost 250,000 euro and pissed off taxpayers. The city says it will repair the logo soon enough. In the meantime maybe we should take bets on the ‘e’ falling off.

(Linsk: www.omroepwest.nl, www.rtlnieuws.nl, Image: Twitter @ShakeAtOrion)

(Voor = before, Na = after)

If Philips wants to go retro and recycle their old logo, let them spin it however they want to because they are a business and tax payers aren’t paying for their logo. When the City of Amsterdam wants a new logo and it costs them 100,000 euro of tax payers’ money but looks like it took a few minutes to make between sips of coffee, then it’s time to ask what’s going on.

The operative words are ‘look like’. The back and forth of calling, mailing and meetings to come up with a plan to redesign a new logo is probably what padded the costs in the first place, but that doesn’t make the result easier to swallow for the masses. The city claims the ‘new” logo is more compact; I see that the words and the Xs are a bit bigger now. However, 100,000 euro is a lot of money from the city to come up with a restyling of a logo that could easily take minutes to make.

(For anybody who want to learn about the three XXXs in the city’s coat of arms instead of making silly assumptions, please read this.)

UPDATE: The designers defend their point.

(Link and screenshot: www.rtlnieuws.nl)

Dear big cheeses at Philips,

You do realise that your new logo is just a revamping of the old one, with elements from back in the days when you guys were making radios and light bulbs. Sure, retro can be cool, but one wonders about how much work was really put into this as opposed to how well it was pitched to you as being new. In other words, it kind of looks as if you’ve been had: the logo looks like it belongs on a football jersey and the redesigned waves remind me of Pepsi Cola.

Your last pay-off, ‘Sense and Simplicity’, sounded too much like the novel ‘Sense and Sensibility’ by Jane Austen, but I’m sure you got that a lot. ‘Simplicity’ was never really a good idea since you make very complicated products for medical purposes and not just coffee machines for the masses. I could speculate that you were more concerned with trying to convince yourselves than your intended consumers.

Your new pay-off, ‘Innovation and You’, tells me you’ve figured out that ‘simplicity’ was not the way to go and that everyone should benefit from innovation when they buy your products. I like that. However, your retro logo seems to contradict your pay-off: you are trying to move forward while clinging to the glories of the past. That is what hipsters are doing and it’s not really working for them either.

(Link and screenshot: www.amsterdamadblog.com)