New York: new campaign ‘We

“It sucks!” wrote someone. “If there’s a riot in New York, this will be it,” wrote someone else. Yet another comment stated, “This is literally the worst design I’ve ever seen.”

Hours after the new “We ♥ NYC” logo was unveiled later this month, the reaction on Twitter and other social media sites was not just negative, but brutal.

The design is part of a campaign aimed at “leaving behind the divisions and negativity” that accompanied the pandemic, according to Kathryn Wylde, chief executive and chairman of the Partnership for New York City.

The new logo is inspired by the original “I ♥ NY” logo designed by Milton Glaser for a 1977 advertising campaign aimed at promoting tourism in New York State.

At the time, the state was facing an economic crisis, with high levels of unemployment. The “I ♥ NY” campaign’s commercials and print advertising highlighted nature and culture in New York State, from Niagara Falls to Broadway theater, and encouraged tourism and vacation travel.

The new campaign is aimed specifically at New York City — which explains the addition of the C — and Graham Clifford, the art director who oversaw the creation of the new logo, said the idea was “to develop a more modern take” on the old idea.

Clifford used a font adapted from the one used on New York subway signs, as he told reporter James Barron of The New York Times. “The subway system works like the veins or the heart of the city,” he said, adding that “there you find Wall Street guys sitting next to bricklayers. It’s a place where all kinds of people come together, and we recognize this fact”.

An admirable intention, to be sure. However, the design itself aroused anger in many people.

Rafi Schwartz, writer and co-owner of the Discourse Blog, was succinct but philosophical, writing that “this is crap on every conceivable level, and also on some levels that exist beyond human perception.”

Could it be the sans serif font is the problem? Or the fact that the characters look stacked and don’t line up well? Or was it the shading of the heart in order to create an illusion that it is three-dimensional? Or the fact that the heart seems to float both to the right and above the text? Or… all of that together?

The Kid Mero, a comedian, cultural commentator, and TV and podcast host born in Washington Heights and raised in the Bronx, finds geometry disturbing.

When he was “a little graffiti artist”, in his description, he used to add a superfluous “E” at the end of the name Mero just for symmetry, and because of this “logo imbalance” confuses him. “I’m not going to Pratt [instituto de design]I don’t know the terminology, but doesn’t the logo look totally unbalanced?”

Tag Hartman-Simkins, a Brooklyn resident and design director at Futurism.com, wrote on Twitter that the design had gotten “buried under feedback”.

Contacted by email, Hartman-Simkins added that “I can’t imagine anyone with a background in graphic design would have created that without a committee of squeaky-clean politicians deciding to sand the rough edges of the design until they felt it was safe for public consumption.”

Not everyone hates the new design. Writer Michael Musto, born in New York and a keen observer, reacted to the logo by raising a thumb.

“Even at its worst, New York is better than anywhere else,” he said. “I’m a true New Yorker, I’ve lived here my whole life and I’m never leaving the city, so I’m all for any collective affirmation, and I like the idea of ​​using the subway fountain. than that ‘we'”.

Some people were less concerned with design and more interested in what the city had decided to make a priority.

In response to a Twitter post about the new logo, Ah-Niyah Gold, who was born and raised in New York and owns a PR agency, wrote: “Shouldn’t we be more concerned about the rent issue? “, in a reference to the crisis that the city faces in the area of ​​housing.

There were also people who decided to take matters into their own hands.

Mary Wagner, a Brooklyn-based copywriter, art director and social media strategist, created a “very quick” revamped version of the new logo, where the word “Us” is replaced with “RATS”.

Reached by message on Twitter, she said clothing stores New York or Nowhere and OnlyNY “are examples of brands that are creating looks that resonate with New York City in a way that doesn’t embarrass those who live in the city.”

Ryan McGinness, an artist whose work is influenced by logos, typography and pictograms, also decided to recreate the logo – and was directly inspired by Milton Glaser, who died in 2020.

“Instead of hating someone else’s work (and I think there’s a lot to hate about the new ‘We Love NYC’ logo), I decided to personally take on the challenge to create what I believe is a better solution,” he wrote in a message. “The original logo was undamaged and therefore did not need repair. Instead, we will build a new one based on it.”

McGinness made his version of the logo available to New York for free, with a cheeky quote from “Seinfeld”: “You can have it, NYC. I don’t want to get paid for the work. OK, maybe dinner at Mendy’s. But soup and a sandwich don’t count as a meal!”

Visual artist Marilyn Minter, who has lived in New York since 1976, chose not to dwell on the aesthetics of the new logo, in an email message, and instead redirects her energy to the city. “I am for anything that brings New Yorkers together,” she wrote. “I believe the city is a special place.”

And the logo inspired camaraderie and unity in the hundreds of people who took to Twitter to say they hated it. Still, Minter was diplomatic: “This is a great city, and it’s trying to become even better. I ♥ Nyc.”