Melbourne Redesigned

July 30, 20090 Comments Tagged: brand, geometric, logo, melbourne, redesign

Last week Robert Doyle, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, unveiled the identity that will represent the City of Melbourne into the future. The previous logo was created in the early 90's, and this update is definitely an improvements - a symbol for a city boldly pushing forwards. According to the press release...

“The ‘M’ design will become an icon for Melbourne, synonymous with the modern, vibrant, cool city Melbourne is today and will continue to be in the future.

“The new identity will deliver more impact, be stronger, more flexible and reduce confusion as to who is delivering services. It will build greater long term identification and align with best practice around the world.”

The logo as a purely visual concept is quite interesting. The outline is an almost optical illusion of an m in three dimensions. Lines are drawn between the corners of the exterior (starting more tightly grouped on the left, and petering off to the right). The result is quite a complex geometric shape.

The main colours are a selection of greens and blues, slightly translucent so that the colours mix into each other. There are various other colour variations presented, so it seems that perhaps it is the shape and the treatment of the shape, and the colour could potentially provide variants for different situations.

As far as presenting Melbourne as a city of the future, vibrant, changing, and full of possibilities, I think this does a great job. I think there will be people who look at it and find it to be just an odd, messy abstract letter m, but it seems to me that it communicates really well, the vision of the City of Melbourne as they want it to be seen.

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