In Pur­suit of the Uberlogo

One Supercity’s Quest for an Iconic Doodle (or My Two Cents).
Words: Michael Barrett.

An ‘A’ for Auckland?

I can never res­ist a lit­er­ary allu­sion or two; life some­times does imit­ate art, or vice versa, and I reckon whichever way you look at it, the Auck­land City Logo Com­pet­i­tion does bear a passing resemb­lance to Lewis Carroll’s Hunt­ing of the Snark, the non­sense poem that describes “with infin­ite humour the impossible voy­age of an improb­able crew to find an incon­ceiv­able creature” (thanks to Wiki­pe­dia for iron­ing out that quote for me).

It’s Auck­land, 2010, a ‘Super City’ looms, and also upon us, appar­ently, is an infernal conun­drum. The new Auck­land requires an iden­tity. Pronto. Or at least before the bal­lot papers get sent out for the elec­tions for the new city coun­cil, says Clive Nel­son, the Auck­land Trans­ition Agency’s spokes­man on the sub­ject. Said Nel­son late last Fri­day after­noon, as I was about to exit the office, “The new coun­cil starts on Novem­ber 1. The elect­oral office told us that we have to have a logo to go out on the bal­lot papers before then.”

Logo ahoy? The book­cover front of “The Hunt­ing of the Snark” by Lewis Car­roll and Henry Holiday.

That, how­ever, doesn’t neces­sar­ily mean you need to have a design com­pet­i­tion – I believe the more-travelled route is to put the job to tender. Cer­tainly people far more qual­i­fied than myself have cast their tup­pence on the sub­ject of why com­pet­i­tions such as this are bad news for design­ers. Do a simple Google search on the sub­ject and you’ll people such as Amer­ican Jeff Fisher, who suc­cinctly summed up the neg­at­ives back in 2007:
“Busi­ness and organ­iz­a­tions, with the abil­ity to pay going rates for pro­fes­sional graphic design ser­vices, have found the lure of win­ning a ‘con­test’ will reel in large num­bers of design­ers for the chance of a few minutes of fame, a little glory and per­haps cash or prizes not nearly worth the value of the design effort on the open mar­ket. In return, those con­duct­ing these design lot­ter­ies often get a vir­tual menu of design options, and the rights to use all entries as they please, with little need of valu­able prize options or the out­lay of much cash.”

As far as com­pet­i­tions in Auck­land go, it’s safe to say that of late they’ve been a resound­ing fail­ure. How­ever, as far as being a PR stunt, or pos­sibly a dis­trac­tion from the real busi­ness of city build­ing, this com­pet­i­tion might be a resound­ing suc­cess. Already the Twit­ter­verse is hum­ming with sound of crayon on paper and, it has to be said, this par­tic­u­lar com­pet­i­tion will surely strike a chord on the harp of civic spirit. It’s not a ‘spec’ comp for a com­pany logo after all, but des­pite that and prot­est­a­tions that the pub­lic should decide, it’s still a spec comp – and as such the cri­ti­cisms above still apply. I’m not the Grinch who will chas­tise chil­dren for enter­ing, but you have to ask, is this con­test really aimed at com­pet­ent design­ers? If not, then it’s a stunt. If it is, then the organ­isers have gone a funny way about things. By the by, I’m still inter­ested in see­ing the res­ult (and there’s only a month to wait!), but without an open judging pro­cess it’s a bit like real­ity TV, just without the real­ity part.

The judging panel has in itself drawn a bit of flack from the design com­munity – the “improb­able crew” con­sists of a couple of artists, a fash­ion designer, a journo, art writer and a mayor – “a Pon­sonby judging panel” as one wag on Twit­ter put it, but that’s not quite right, they come from all over the Queen city, and to be fair, they all, pos­sibly, have reas­on­ably good eyes for design. Oddly though, there’s no graphic design rep­res­ent­a­tion. On the phone last Fri­day, Nel­son said that he didn’t think that was an issue and that a num­ber of the judges “are very exper­i­enced in logos”. Ham­ish Keith for instance, said Nel­son, designed the cur­rent Labour Party logo; Dick Frizzell, accord­ing to Nel­son, designed the 4 Square logo, although that’s also not quite right. Frizzell’s re-imaginings of Mr 4 Square are cer­tainly more inter­est­ing than the ori­ginal. Not sure I’d be spruik­ing it for a place on the rates bill though.

The design­ers I’ve spoken to after a quick ring around seem more bemused than incensed about the com­pet­i­tion (actu­ally, since then a few do seem to be a bit incensed, and some incensed in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion, and there’s a bit of con­ver­sa­tion going on over here) – the $10,000 non-cash prize and accom­pa­ny­ing trophy provide little incent­ive for any of the more estab­lished firms to enter, des­pite prot­est­a­tions from the Auck­land Trans­ition Agency that they “hope that they would”. One design pro­fes­sional was con­cerned that as a type of crowd sourcing – an open com­pet­i­tion – that there should have been an equally as open judging pro­cess – and that is a fair call. Over­seas logo com­pet­i­tions have been rife with knock-offs and clip art; an open judging pro­cess might help call atten­tion to some of this dross.

Clive Nel­son also says a trans­ition logo wouldn’t do, and to be fair, the expense of imple­ment­ing a trans­ition logo and then under­go­ing the pro­cess all over again six months later does seem waste­ful. So is it an infernal conun­drum? After the com­pet­i­tion win­ner is chosen I’d assume that there would be a typ­ical tender situ­ation, and then a pro­fes­sional design firm will come on board to begin the pro­cess of ret­ro­fit­ting the logo. Will it save any money hav­ing a logo ready to go? Maybe, but surely due dili­gence, proper con­sulta­tion, a paper trail and an appro­pri­ate res­ult is a prefer­able route. The pub­lic judges may decide, but it’s rate­payer money going into imple­ment­a­tion, and there may be added costs.

Info from the Auck­land City Coun­cil says that the Auck­land City Coat of Arms was first cre­ated by the Col­lege of Arms in Great Bri­tain on 23 Octo­ber 1911 to sym­bol­ise the char­ac­ter­ist­ics and tra­di­tions of the region in New Zea­l­and where the city is situated.

Pre­vi­ous Auck­land logos.

The worst thing about the last round of Auckland’s com­pet­i­tions is that they seem to be a form of buck passing; a way for bur­eau­crats to deflect cri­ti­cism, and there’s been a bit of that in the past, even when the logos were designed by ‘big firms’, such as Design­works. The thing is that people can never agree about design any­way. One man’s Picasso is another man’s, well, pish. In this instance, the judges can pick a win­ner, or not, as per the terms and con­di­tions, take a bit of heat and walk away rel­at­ively unscathed. Hope­fully this lot of judges won’t hang Joe Pub­lic out to dry as some of the Queens Wharf judges did the archi­tects involved (e.g. ARC chair­man Mike Lee in “The Water­front Wars”, Metro issue 340, “Just because we’ve got a gen­er­a­tion of mediocre archi­tects, I’m not going to apo­lo­gise for want­ing an eleg­ant build­ing”). Then, like now, it’s all about the brief. Not much char­it­able was said about the Queens Wharf brief, but I’m sure it was a little more com­pre­hens­ive than, “Design some­thing awe­some!” (step 2). Still, it’s safety in num­bers; Bill Ral­ston last week on Twit­ter (jok­ingly) said, “Have accep­ted hos­pital pass. Will judge the logo for the new Auck­land. Will blame Ham­ish Keith and Dick Frizzell when all goes pear shaped”.

Too sim­ilar?

Gen­er­ally, as brand strategist Brian Richards puts it, “design is the last stage in the thought pro­cess”. In this case it will be the first, and pos­sibly a first in the area of city brand­ing where you try to sum­mar­ise with a logo a rep­res­ent­a­tion of a city that doesn’t quite exist yet. It is an unusual scen­ario. Look­ing at over­seas city iden­tity pro­jects it isn’t always smooth sail­ing when you do have pros on board (for coun­cil or for tour­ism, Lon­don here and Lon­don again). When Melbourne’s redesign was going on some com­plaints were about the American-owned design firm under­tak­ing the work. One com­ment­ator, Aus­tralian designer Ian Brown speak­ing on Aus­tralian Cre­at­ive, summed up the counter-argument quite succinctly.

“…it is the design­ers’ job to under­stand the hearts and minds of the audi­ence. Why else would you have a brief? Why else would you do research? Why else would you spend weeks immers­ing your­self in a pro­ject, get­ting to know all the finer details of the cli­ent, when you can just get someone who thinks they under­stand the audi­ence to knock some­thing up in two hours for free?”

That, des­pite the use of the sick­en­ing cliché “hearts and minds”, about sums up my objec­tions to this com­pet­i­tion. That, and also because this com­pet­i­tion has mis­lead­ing and con­fus­ing ele­ments, mostly in the form of get out of the jail clauses in the terms and con­di­tions. The judges don’t actu­ally have to choose a win­ner, and as copy­right of any win­ning design passes to the coun­cil then, pre­sum­ably, it can be mod­i­fied until the cows come home. That’s where some trans­par­ency in the vot­ing pro­cess might have been nice. I’m all for the idea enga­ging the pub­lic and drum­ming up a bit of interest in the art of graphic design. Per­haps a ‘Blue Sky’ com­pet­i­tion might have been a bet­ter option – all care, no respons­ib­il­ity, no rais­ing of expect­a­tions. Auck­land has a his­tory of rais­ing and dash­ing pub­lic expect­a­tions via design com­pet­i­tions. Will this logo com­pet­i­tion be a fantasy like Queens Wharf or Te Wero Bridge? As to what the design might be, I’d say there are prob­ably three options: an ‘A’, a Ran­gitoto, or a Sky Tower? My money’s on an ‘A’, and hope­fully not an A for Awful.

Brand Auck­land — a Design­works pro­ject from recent years to help pro­mote tour­ism in Auckland.

Mark Legget’s design, aired on Twit­ter last week.

Dunedin-based designer and lec­turer Alex Gilks’ entry to the logo com­pet­i­tion. “Some­thing post­mod­ern and self-referential.”

Auck­land under cover. A design via Twit­ter from “kiwianarama”.