A new county council logo which incorporates the traditional emblem of Staffordshire has been introduced.
The new logo has cost £7,000 to create and features the historic Stafford Knot and aims to reflect the county council as modern organisation. It also designed to present unified sense of pride in Staffordshire and its heritage.
The designwill be phased in gradually across all county services only when replacements are needed. The logo will eventually appear on all council signs, vehicles and publications.
Members of the public and council employees had input on the logo’s design, which will replace the previous one that was more than a decade old.
Staffordshire County Council has received the approval of Lord Stafford to use the historic knot.
Council Leader Philip Atkins said:
“The launch comes at an exciting time for the county council as its new administration strives to install a renewed sense of pride in its residents and take the county council forward on a regional, national and international level.
“We’ve introduced a new logo that incorporates for the first time the symbol that is recognised county and nationwide and is synonymous with our historical heritage. It reflects the pride the new county council has in Staffordshire and the fact we are here to serve our communities, as well as being in the top ten largest local authorities in the country serving a population of over 800,000.
“We’re confident people across the county will welcome the new logo and that in addition it receives wider recognition. Old logos will only be replaced where there is a genuine need. All services delivered by the county council in whatever form will eventually have the new logo on it – meaning everyone will be able to recognise at a glance services provided by us.”
You have got to be kidding me! £7,000 for a logo?!
Looks like a Wonder Bra advert to me
I’m sorry but I could have designed that exact same logo for a fraction of the price.
If anybody’s interested, £4k and it’s yours! ;)
7 grand is quite shocking.
Its nothing other than the staffordshire knot – and the font appears to be a ‘bog standard’ or ‘common or garden font’.
I have a fleeting interest in art –
The claims the logo
“reflects the pride the new county council has in Staffordshire and the fact we are here to serve our communities'”
is complete tosh. im not claiming they don’t care – just that the design doesn’t appear to be reflective of this.
I have no problem with authorities updating logos but 7000 isn’t value for money.
Who designed it ? that logo isn’t even a days work in a vector art package.
We sure are proud to live in Staffordshire now we’ve seen that logo.
Seven ‘kin grand! How do they sleep at night
pet
They sleep soundly.
They’re proud of this. They posed for photo’s and wrote a press release about it. Look at them in the picture all smiles, the smug “look what we’ve done! Aren’t we great!?” sort of smiles you see Cilla Black or June Whitfield wearing just as inappropriately on adverts for money when you’re dead.
Look at the photo, 18 people who despite appearing to be sighted and with a full set of thumbs, access to computers and a warm office to work in have blown £7000 on a logo that could have been knocked up in 10 minutes by a school kid.
Who got the £7000? We bet they got a buzz off raising the invoice. Can we get jobs doing this kind of thing?
Can we get ourselves on the 18 strong logo buying team, is it 9 -5 or flexy?
Are these people making fun of us? Deliberately yanking our chains?
£7k is an outrage, but I’m glad they’ve kept the knot at least – so many councils try doing something modern and it nearly always ends up looking terrible and having no meaning.
Think of the Olympic logo and see the bright side :)
I see that the Staffordshire knot has now been discovered to be around 500 years older than previously thought. What a coup for the County… But… I’m not sure if I’m missing something, but as knots go… I can’t help feeling that it’s not the most awe inspiring one I’ve ever come across. I was in Portsmouth over the summer, and saw some tremendously impressive maritime knots.
I’m just finding it a bit difficult to get excited about proof of the existence of a knot that was probably invented four minutes after the invention of string.
KNOT UNITED
Speaking from a designers perspective the £7000 is not what offends me. (We don’t know exactly what this was for. I suspect it was for a little more than just drawing the logo.) My main concern is how bad the logo is. The old one was terrible. This is not much better. I dread to think who made the final decision on the logo. Probably a committee of people with no idea about good design. There are fundamental problems with the logo which should not have seen the light of day. The knot image is too detailed. Have a look at how the detail disappears when it is reduced down http://staffscc.net/leadersblog/. Then we have the colours, font choice and typographic layout – all very amateur and naive.
A great example of a bad design brief (probably), sub-standard design and ill-informed final choice. I would expect nothing less from our County Council.
Can see your point Steve.
Does kind of make a mockery of “the creative county” tagline…
Personally I think they should have thrown it open to the people of the county to come up with something. For a prize of 5k or something. The schools and colleges could have been involved – could have been turned into a real event.