New City of Vancouver $8,000 logo approved by Council

The City of Vancouver has voted to approve Vancouver’s controversial new logo design, which cost $8,000, at a Council meeting on Wednesday.

See also

• New City of Vancouver logo rolled out before approval
• City of Vancouver spent $8,000 on this new Gotham font logo design

All but two councillors voted for the new, simplistic logo design. Coun. George Affleck questioned why there was no public consultation on such a “touchy” subject.

“We did talk about it… We didn’t want to go through a massive rebranding effort, that’s when costs really do go up,” said City Manager Sadhu Johnston. “That would cost considerably more.”

Affleck disagreed, and said the process of consultation could have been inspirational to Vancouverites.

“There is a lot of concern about what goes on here at City Hall and this is could have been a very positive process that we could have done with the residents of this city,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we have been presented with a logo fully completed… With no idea of what the costs over the next several years will be… I can’t support this.”

Coun. Melissa DeGenova expressed her dismay with the new logo on Twitter.

Why didn’t we incorporate our strong aboriginal history, mountains, water or other unique #Vancouver symbols in new logo? #vanpoli pic.twitter.com/GEciuL0kiH

— Melissa De Genova (@MelissaDeGenova) February 22, 2017

Staff answered my Q:No consultation with the public on the new $8000 logo that was done in Gotham font, no graphics #vanpoli

— Melissa De Genova (@MelissaDeGenova) February 22, 2017

The new logo has a bolder, simplified wordmark using the same colour scheme. The lettering is in Gotham Font.

The old logo (left) compared to the new design on the right (Image: City of Vancouver)

New logo driven by social media

Speaking at the Council meeting, Director of Corporate Communications Rena Kendall-Craden said creating a brand was not just selecting a font.

“It’s identifying what are the qualities you want to support. We wanted it to be fresh, modern, humble,” Kendall-Craden told councillors. “We wanted to create something that would work for us better on small screens and social channels.”

Kendall-Craden said the City had also created a social font, which would be “much more distinctive, much more aggressive.”

She said the company hired to design the new logo, Hangar 18, offered them between eight and 14 different iterations of the logo for them to choose from.

“[The logo we chose] was the simplest, and then we could add something later on if we wanted to,” she said, adding that First Nations heritage would be considered going forward.

Kendall-Craden said the City had not costed out the overall rollout as the logo would simply change online first, then as City resources, like business cards, ran out over time.

Replacing the six “Welcome to the City of Vancouver” signs would cost around $150,000 in total, although this was not planned yet and was not in the budget for this year.