Freedom to Create. Spirit to Achieve.
The Canadian province of Alberta (my home province) released a new logo and slogan yesterday. It’s long overdue as our old logo has been in use as long as I can recall. While it’s probably the best of the generally weak proposed logos (Who did these? Student competition?), it still doesn’t full sit well with me.
TYPE: Structuring the ‘A’ similar to the previous Alberta mark was a savvy choice and a good first step towards a successful rebrand. However, the loose script treatment ends up reminding me of the recent rebrand by the art & crafts megastore Michael’s,which isn’t a great brand association for our mighty province. I will say it is an attractive and well executed custom script, just kind of generic and fruity for a strong bold province known for its cowboys and roughnecks. The way it ends abruptly putting all that creativity and spirit into a limited box of achievement is visually unappealing and alludes to concrete “inside the box” thinking, when everyone really wants to think outside the box.
COLOR The color choice (Pantone Baby Poo C) is rather uninspired as well. Color would have been a good area to redirect the bad environmental reputation Alberta has received by going with blues and greens reflecting the natural beauty of the province. Instead we have a gross brown(?) evocative of the miry muck of the oilsands…perfect.
SLOGAN “Freedom to Create. Spirit to Achieve.” The new slogan makes us sound like an artist’s commune in the middle of a communist dictatorship. We’re free to do what we want here, while soaring to new heights. Cheesy as sin and absolute garbage.
OVERALL On the whole I can’t help but judge this as a good effort, but a failure. The color is wrong, and the script is weak. I’ve lived in Alberta my whole life and this doesn’t come close to capturing the spirit and energy of this place. Could be worse though. D
5 Responses to “Freedom to Create. Spirit to Achieve.”
Steve - March 27, 2009
You summed it up nicely with “Cheesy as sin and absolute garbage”
My proposed tagline is “Freedom to drive Trucks, Cold as Fuck”
Jason Dorn - March 27, 2009
Well the slogan is still better than Manitoba’s “Spirited Energy” that they unleashed a few years back.
I don’t mind the new word mark, I kinda like script used on the word, but I’m baffled as to what the box at the end is suppose to be? Is it a period at the end of sentence? Or did they get to the end of the design process and decide “hey, we need to through some colour in there?”
However this rebrand was still much less of a PR nightmare than Manitoba had with their’s last year, at least the the conservatives had the sense to spend the money with an Alberta agency, when manitoba shipped their tax dollars to a firm in Toronto which caused a bit of public outrage to say the least.
admin - March 27, 2009
There has been a bit of outcry at the $25M pricetag…I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’ve never even gotten a sniff of a branding project that pricy. I’d gladly do a better job than this for a meager $1M. Where do these ridiculously expensive branding projects come from? And how does that budget get approved?
Jason Dorn - March 27, 2009
From the story I read I got the impression that the $25 million was to cover the cost of reprinting business cards, replacing signs, and the cost of the overall campaign.
admin - March 27, 2009
Still…
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