Over at the Peoria Pundit, we went back and forth with a number of people over the top eight designs from Converse Marketing.  Okay, I went back and forth with everyone and their mother about it.  Early on I mentioned I had some experience with graphic design and since I used to do web development, I needed to know the basics.  This was warped into a strawman ad hominem by a butthurt design snob, in which I was posing as an expert and subsequently hate all designers and their industry.  Gotta love internet tough guys.

I guess I should note that I’ve made friends with a number of graphic designers–some of whom I’ve relied on heavily for feedback or inspiration–or that I’m a regular buyer from deviantart.com, which hosts thousands and thousands of amateur artists.  Clearly, these are people I hate with a fiery passion.  Fuck those bastards.  *cough*

Pretentious Design Snob did make the human case for the designers themselves, which is certainly something I can sympathize with.  Another commenter mentioned something about the meaning it should have to Peorians.  Okay.  So what I’ll do, instead of focusing on my initial negative reactions, is offer some positive feedback on the designs I think are pointing in the right direction:

Still gimmicky and plain.

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Still looks like 90’s printer software clip art.

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This one is better in that it actually has visual elements that mean something to Peorians:  the skyline and the river.  I don’t think we ought to have a logo without without at least a skyline.  The previous logo fails because of its style, even though it has an extra recognizable feature (the Murray Baker bridge).

The colors do work well together, but I don’t particularly care for them.  The font change/bold halfway through the text is still the equivalent of a badger choking on an abortion.

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When it comes to this one, the only thing I see is:

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Simple, well done, the exclamation point still sucks.  I could live with the overlapping lines if they just got rid of the obnoxious punctuation.

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The first thing that comes to mind is still a Boy Scout merit badge but of all the designs this one probably carries the most meaningful value.  What this represents is the view of Peoria that seems to appear out of nowhere as you’re driving on westbound I-74 in East Peoria.  Virtually everyone in Peoria is familiar with this, and even people from outside the area I’ve talked to have made positive remarks about the view.  One person even referred to it as “the hidden city.”  Mysterious.

Still not wild about the colors.

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The font blows.  If we go with this one we might as well change our slogan to “Peoria: We Have Tumbleweeds!”

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No connection to the city whatsoever.  The font isn’t bad and I wouldn’t want to live with these colors for the next umpteen years.

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Alright, alright, that was still pretty negative.  Still, this is something we’re going to be stuck with until the next time the city council gets a wild hair up its ass and wants to change things nobody asked to be changed.

One thing I’m wondering is whether anyone has brought up the idea to create a city seal instead of a logo.  This has three distinct benefits:  1)  Seals have a quality that makes them automatically look official.  Big cities have seals, why can’t we?  2)  A seal looks appropriate on a business card, a police car, city stationary, plastered on the wall somewhere, etc.  3)  Unlike logos, nobody gives a shit what seals look like.