2006

CBC article
Toronto Star article

Discuss.

Ohhhhh! I'm in stitches!!!

A commenter over at the Canada Immigrant Blog floated the notion that the new Ontario logo looks like three people in a flower-shaped hot tub.

Cinnik, the author of the blog, has taken it upon him/herself to rename the official flower of the province of Ontario from the Trillium to the "The Jacuzzi".

Well done.

They have taken this logo into the digital age!!
Squeeze it. Skew it. Turn it all around.

Good eye Brendan... that's exactly what it's like.

Fortunately, there are some people making some serious noise about the new Ontario identity: http://savethetrilliu...

Unfortunately, it's being made into a political issue and not one of brand equity and good design.

Please, extend your design-love to those poor folks in Ontario and write Dalton McGuinty a letter, telling him how you feel about the new identity.

Does anyone know if postal mail to the Premier requires postage? I know you can send mail to your MP free of charge, but I don't know if the same applies to the Premiers, let alone that of another province.

Web feedback form:
https://www.premier.g...

Mail:
The Honourable Dalton McGuinty
Premier of Ontario
Legislative Building
Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario
Canada
M7A 1A1

Phone:
(416) 325-1941

Fax:
(416) 325-3745

An open letter to Dalton McGuinty
Emailed to the Premier on September 18th, 2006

Mr. McGuinty,

My name is Steven Luscher, and I am a Graphic Designer born in Oshawa, Ontario. I lived in Ontario for 25 years, and currently reside in Vancouver, BC.

The Ontario brand has a special place in my heart, and it pains me as both a Graphic Designer and an Ontario native to see what has been done to it. Instead of making a rapid departure from the Ontario brand with a completely new logo, I want to see the investment that Ontario has made into the old Trillium identity preserved.

We designers try to teach our clients about something called Brand Equity. Made up of two parts (brand image, and brand awareness), Brand Equity is an indicator of the general health of a brand. Image "consists of the mental associations consumers make with the brand," and awareness "is composed of the strength of the brand in consumers' minds, for example their ability to recall the brand." (http://en.wikipedia.o....

This new logo poses a threat to the brand image of Ontario, as evidenced by an attack made on your government by the Ontario PC party. They claim that you have "taken the symbol ... and made it look more like the logo of the Liberal Party" (http://savethetrilliu.... Whether or not one agrees with their claim that you are "playing politics with Ontario's symbol", what you have on your hands is a public relations liability - a logo that actively causes harm to Ontario's brand.

Moreover, this new identity throws out decades of built-up brand awareness. It's simply too different.

I ask that you reconsider Ontario's visual identity strategy. Together, we Ontarians can work to preserve and strengthen Ontario's brand.

Yours sincerely,
Steven Luscher, BDes, Provisional RGD

Steven Luscher Design
http://stevenluscherd...

I received a reply to my open letter from the Premier, but was not granted permission to reprint it here.

Yesterday's Toronto Star has the latest:

"There are those people, I can understand, who are reluctant to part with tradition," McGuinty says. "I'm not one of those folks. I want to embrace the future and evolve as a society."

...

A political firestorm erupted when the Toronto Star revealed Bensimon Byrne, the firm that does the Liberals' election advertising, created the revamped trillium logo at a cost of $219,000.

...

"If other people want to be excited by political prospects created or lost through the logo, fine, I'll let them deal with that. But I won't be distracted by it. I think it's a modest dimension of a government that's embracing the 21st century."

- http://www.thestar.co...

Perhaps Dalton McGuinty would like to teach other organizations who are "reluctant to part with tradition" to "embrace the future" like, for instance, these guys:



...or perhaps these guys (who have been "reluctant to part with tradition" since 1898!):

Hey Steven I never knew you were from my home town, small world huh.