The brand strategy and logo cooked up by the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce with financial backing by Sound Transit’s business mitigation funding hit the streets today — and the results weren’t pretty. As a member of the committee the Chamber assembled to create the logo last year, I have a few things to say about it. More on that below. First, the new logo.
We first told you about the effort to create a marketing brand for Capitol Hill way back in October of 2008 when the process began. A year later, Sound Transit announced their business mitigation efforts to support Capitol Hill businesses through the eight-year light rail construction period were ready to begin with the new logo and marketing components like a new Hill Web site (not yet launched.)
Today, the press releases went out. To give you a sense of how this process is playing out, CHS didn’t receive a copy of the release this morning. But the Stranger did — and the results have been predictable:
Honestly, it kind of makes me feel nauseous. The mish mash… the color… meh. I’m not liking it.
*shrug*
Posted by Phelix on December 2, 2009 at 10:42 AM
This makes me feel like I’ve had a couple of quadruple venti Americanos.
Posted by kk in seattle on December 2, 2009 at 10:42 AM
At least they spelled it right.
Posted by DOUG. on December 2, 2009 at 10:43 AM
This look like crap wtf
Posted by nitsua on December 2, 2009 at 10:43 AM
So, about that branding committee and defending the logo. I can’t. Defend it. I can tell you that it was the result of consensus and a reluctance to expose the design to a wider community of professionals. I lobbied for a review by Capitol Hill-based graphic design experts but couldn’t find support. The design and branding process was being executed by an Eastside firm and I wanted to balance that with feedback from local experts. That didn’t happen largely because of a high level of sensitivity about the Chamber’s effort to create a Capitol Hill ‘brand.’ It would be good in the future for organizations like Sound Transit to make a bigger commitment to keep these projects in the hands of businesses from the communities.
There were other candidates for the brand that were more (and less!) interesting — particularly a sleeker design that some found too subversive and complicated. But I also, in the end, voted for the design you see today. And you’ll see soon on signs on the Hill and, I presume, on the Chamber’s new Web site when it launches.
If it helps, try to see the logo for what it is — an effort to help the Capitol Hill business community through a long stretch in a challenging environment. There will be lots of good things that come out of light rail on Capitol Hill. In the meantime, there’s an ugly logo trying really hard to keep the Hill’s business environment as strong as possible.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t have a strong opinion of what the logo of the Capitol Hill “brand” looks like, but I don’t mind it. It would look better in a different color, but oh well. Anything that gets decided by committee ends up being watered down and generic.
Can you make it bigger?
Who made that decision? Bravo to you Justin for pushing to hire someone local… I am not a huge fan of the logo, but I’ve seen worse.
I’m also confused why some people would be sensitive about the Chamber wanting to “brand” the area. Seems like that’s fairly harmless. Oh well.
The “new” Fred Hutch logo was arrived at, a couple of years ago, by a similar process.
It served to unite us all: everyone I talked to hated it. The most positive comment I could find was “disappointing”. We’ve kind of got used to (or resigned to) it now.
Basically, it’s not a big deal.
Seriously? Seriously?
The font weight is too thin to be read at distance–which is how all those folks will be reading it in signs. The ascenders and descenders on the font itself tend to get lost in the green, and the “ill” in “hill” turns into a fuzzy mess from a distance. The white from the negative space is going to make reading the letters even harder. The green shape doesn’t read as ANYTHING…just a splotchy mess. The white negative space that dips down to touch that last L in “hill” doesn’t even align with the L, so it doesn’t look clever, it looks like an accident, and that little jigjog is driving me crazy.
I KNOW there’s an art college at the end of Broadway, and lots of graphic designers live in the area. Surely, this wasn’t the best option? Sometimes it’s better to say, “This isn’t what we want,” and pay a killfee and walk away.
ARGH. So frustrating.
So, let’s be honest. Utter crap.
Start over.
The thought of getting paid to produce this is beyond the pale.
Tweaker stuff, as in too much bad crack or speed. Really.
And where the hell does that green come from? Our world is a series of great greens, not that chemical looking bad dye job green.
Frankly, I’d rather the Chamber put the Sound Transit money to better uses than another logo. This will do.
True–I’d rather have the Sound Transit money go elsewhere too. But I’m sure there are people who would donate time and skills to make sure we weren’t stuck with this half-hearted mess that comes nowhere near conveying the awesomeness of the Hill. (I would, and I no longer even live on the Hill.)
Wow, that is hideous. A) People who see a logo do not get an explanation to go along with it. So whatever keywords the designers felt went into this design, those words certainly aren’t what one thinks of without being told them first. B) A logo still has to look good at the end of the day. This looks like “I’m gonna try this, now I’m gonna try this, and maybe if I just do a little more of this and this….oh shit! no time to redo it now, so here you go!” *chesire cat grin*
They should have watched this TED talk by Paula Scher prior to branding a neighborhood:
http://www.ted.com/talks/paula_scher_gets_serious.html
This whole talk is great, but from 15:45 to 17:15 is specifically relevant.
posted from a local graphic design studio — [email protected]
Staggering home, up Pike after a night of drinking at the Comet, everything used to look like this to me! ;)
This logo looks like an elementary school project someone did with a rubber stamp. I have a few graphic designers in my arsenal that would have really rocked this logo.
This reminds me of AOL’s new logo ( http://gigaom.com/2009/11/22/aol-reveals-lame-new-look-logo/).
Somebody actually got paid to make this completely uncreative, ameture, ugly logo? I guarantee it only took 3 minutes in illustrator. That can’t go up in public, it’s really embarrassing.
Crap. Crap. Crap.
With all the unique architectural and cultural characteristics of Capitol Hill, all that Kite and the Chamber could come up with was a frenetic logo type with a font that isn’t even interesting or expressive? How ridiculous. I’ve worked on branding initiatives and this logo in no way conveys Capitol Hill’s character.
“A brand is not a logo. A logo is a symbol or identifier of the brand.
A brand is not a corporate identity program. Though that helps to ensure the consistency of the brand.
A brand is not what we say it is, it’s what they say it is. Brands are defined by individuals, not companies. We can guide it. We can care for it. We can manage it and even influence it, but the market (and the people in it) ultimately defines it.”
Credits: The Brand Gap, by Marty Neumeier
A brand is personality. A brand is a feeling. A brand is a promise. The logo they’ve come up with contains none of these.
I think something like the Capitol Hill Seattle Blog logo is so much better.
Who wears that kind of green? It looks like the inside of the elevators at the Central library.
Ugly is an understatement. This is the kind of thing a first year graphic design student does. This is so horrible! Although nothing else could really expected considering this: “it was the result of consensus and a reluctance to expose the design to a wider community of professionals” …shame it’s going forward It really should be redesigned. I can’t believe a firm worked on this?! Did they a have some conceptual BS to explain the horribleness? I can’t believe how bad it is.
Now when I tell out-of-towners, I live in Capital Hill they’ll conjure up an image of that logo?
So disappointing! Anyone with any knowledge of typography appears to be understandably offended. At least it is just a logo that hopefully will fade away fairly fast. I’m more worried about the Joule apartment complex which will probably look really, really dated in ten years (a la Fountain Court in Belltown–built by the same developers).
As a branding and identity professional, my immediate reaction is that this doesn’t capture any true essence of Capitol Hill and its inhabitants or culture. To a half-trained eye this is clearly a novice and unimaginative design.
I’m baffled why the project was handed to an Eastside firm when there is such great and skilled talent here in the NEIGHBORHOOD YOU’RE TRYING TO REPRESENT that could deliver much more succinct and creative results.
Frankly, the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce should be ashamed of themselves for displaying such naïveté in their decision. Brand is IMPORTANT. Right out of the gate, a strong and cohesive identity makes a big impact on audience perception. To be so cheap and uninformed surely results in a third-rate design, a mistake I’ve seen many businesses trip upon. This current logo surely gives the neighborhood a cheap, slapdash appearance.
I’m tempted to lobby a revolt.
As I professional, I can see that your are adept at complaining about another design but what would represent the “essence” of Capitol Hill?
i understand that getting something like this done well might be hard if the process is fairly closed. but still…. yikes….
if they wanted to capture the essence of capitol hill, shouldn’t they just write “capitol hill” in faux ransom note style, print it on paper, and staple it to all the telephones at the edge of the neighborhood? maybe “YOU’RE IN CAPITOL HILL” stickers with red background and white letters stuck on stop signs? I bet you could do all that for a few hundred bucks.
The header art on Mayor McGinn’s ‘ideas for Seattle’ website does a better job of inviting people to a place than this Jackhammer FX/ vision test amateur-hour mess. In the ideasforseattle.org case, it looks and awful lot like a panarama of greenlake users: Silhouettes of people walking, biking, relaxing, etc. Surely the same scheme could readily be used for Capitol Hill to show the geography/architecture, the parks/peapatches, the services (colleges, east precinct, & especially the new rail stop), and the wide variety of people.
In order words, dashdash, the Essence of Capitol Hill may be the inclusiveness, with a close second/third going to the permeating sense of freedom (to choose from quite a few experiences), and the rich and lasting cultural potential.
Uhm, yeah.
Hell.
Wish I had a copy of photoshop – I’d totally work up that shit. My contract fee: the $oftware needed. Any chance the chamber will trash this much-hated first pitch??
No matter how you spin it, it’s still a pig.
Ha should have been lipstick on a pig.
this is horrid. why can’t anything on capitol hill have nod to its beautiful past, i can’t really think of any new successful redesigns when i think of nice places, they’re old buildings. reference the arches, anything is better than this crap
and a slacker design student at best