A sense of place? The new City of Melbourne Identity

THE NEW CoM IDENTITY by LANDOR ASSOCIATES
has aroused torrents of invective, and Melbourne's design fraternity are up in arms. The debate still rages, not least in the comments area on AGDA's open blog, arising from Andrew Ashton and David Pidgeon's 'Open Letter to the Lord Mayor' (see below for text and link to forum).

Nous, les flâneurs, added this statement to the discussion:

There's a saying which goes - If it's Melbourne-based entity the designers have to be from Melbourne... if it's Sydney the designers have to be Australian. But in the really confident design capitals of the world, eg New York, Paris or Tokyo, they don't give a damn, as long as it's visionary. Think of architectural commissions... Pei, Rogers and Piano in Paris, Gehry in Bilbao, Hertzog and De Meuron in China. Sydney dared do it once with a Dane.

The problem really is that this new identity is not visionary, exacerbated by unfortunate mayoral comments, and the fact that Melbourne's internationally renowned studios weren't invited to pitch.

The ' design local' issue arises mainly because the new identity conveys no feel for Melbourne's unique soul and is widely seen as a missed opportunity to do something really good. It's not certain that local designers would have managed this, but surely more likely?

What were they THINKING? We give it a year, max. Maybe MCC could sell it on to a casino?

-----

An Open Letter to the Lord Mayor of Melbourne
24th July, 2009

The City of Melbourne’s rebranding has attracted a veritable storm of controversy, not least because of Lord Mayor Robert Doyle’s inaccurate and unfortunate comments about Victoria’s design industry. Below is an open letter to Robert Doyle, written by Andrew Ashton and David Pidgeon from AGDA Victoria, asking him to outwardly support and promote Victoria’s design industry. We urge those of you who are interested in supporting the industry to take the time to leave your name, studio name and location in the comments section below. We will then pass on the collated signatures and comments to Robert Doyle, Lynne Kosky and John Brumby.

24 July 2008

Th Right Hon the Lord Mayor of Melbourne,
Councillor Robert Doyle
City of Melbourne PO Box 1603 Melbourne VIC 3001

Dear Lord Mayor,

We are writing to you to express our concern over the recent release of the new brand mark for the City of Melbourne. It is of concern to us that the City of Melbourne seems to have ignored the stated Victorian Government policy of supporting and promoting the State’s design industry.

Mr Doyle, the pool of communication and brand design talent in Melbourne is unrivalled in this country and is arguably the most diverse in South East Asia. It is this fact that leaves us dismayed when trying to understand why you chose to appoint a Sydney based / American owned firm to complete a task that could have been just as successfully completed by any number of Victoria’s internationally acclaimed graphic designers.

As for the issue of the “daggy” incumbent design, we would have rather hoped that your significant experience in politics would have taught you to more deeply consider the implication of any public comment. It was frankly insulting to the original creator of the incumbent City of Melbourne brand Mr Richard Henderson of FHA Image Design. We all acknowledge that time waits for few styles and aesthetics but Mr Henderson’s work served the City very well for twenty years and such a glib, final assessment of this legacy does no marketing or design professionals any favours. It tends only to decrease the sophistication of community discussion around communication and brand design.

We urge you to consider and support fellow Victorian designers as you will find that many of these professional are in their own right symbols to the world of “how cool, intellectual, CREATIVE and urbane” Victorians are.

Yours faithfully,
Andrew Ashton – Studio Pip and Co. Balaclava, Victoria / AGDA and AGI Member AGDA Victoria Treasurer

David Pidgeon – Design by Pidgeon East St KIlda, Victoria / AGDA and AGI Member AGDA Victoria Councillor

LINK TO THE ONGOING DEBATE (AGDA):
http://blogs.agda.com.au/suite7/view/post/an-open-letter-to-the-lord-mayor-of-melbourne

The state of design?

Sydney Design 07
11th International Design festival
Powerhouse Museum and other venues Sydney-wide
from August 4
Full program: www.sydneydesign.com.au

Sydney Design kicked off on rainy Friday evening, and the black-clad ones were out in force to hear the often acerbic (unpierced)-tongued architecture writer Elizabeth Farrelly deliver that rare thing – a genuinely funny and interesting launch speech. Praise the Lord. The exhibitions and events program is extensive and Sydney-wide, but it’s a great opportunity to revisit the often-underrated Powerhouse, whose permanent exhibitions are constantly evolving and which has a strong emphasis on interactivity and engagement. Take the kids, they won’t be bored.

The PH deserves credit for driving Sydney Design, working between the major disciplines, and fostering links with other galleries and design orgs, and its distinctive event communications are beginning to achieve the media critical mass needed to penetrate public lethargy and create a sense of excitement and ownership among Sydneysiders, many of whom have discovered design in a big way in the last decade.

This process has a way to go of course. Think of Milan’s Salon del Mobile. While some Milanese probably groan and leave for their coastal villas, it is an event that has come to almost define and envelop the city, spawns an immense fringe, brings billions into the economy, and does much to reinforce not just Italian design, but design in general, with Milan as the centre of the universe. Venice has done it with art. For several centuries in fact.

For a city of 4.5 million Sydney Design ain’t bad, but Melbourne is doing better, having established the National Design Centre at Fed Square, and Victoria even has a Minister for Design. The results were manifested in the Melbourne Design Festival last month. Obviously Melbourne’s city centre (and laneways), with its concentration of galleries, showrooms and ateliers, lends itself better to generating a sense of involvement and excitement, and the NDC’s position in Fed Square situates it at the heart of Melbourne life. It’s also interesting that while the Labour state government is an enthusiastic advocate for design, the original vision (including Fed Square itself) we must grudgingly admit, was Jeff Kennett’s. No equivalent bipartisan vision is evident in NSW.

If Sydney is ever to move into the big league as a ‘design city’ the State Government needs to better support the City Of Sydney’s efforts and to put some substantial resources behind this. Forever putting out transport fires (not literally I hope), constantly on the defensive over planning and infrastructure, obsessively focussed on bringing in the big events we probably DON’T need (eg APEC), our government seems to have no conception of how to harness the existing ingenuity and vitality of its creative and design communities, and leverage this into economic benefit for the city and the state. In fact I'm not sure they even see the opportunity.

Perhaps there’s a case for umbrella-ing even more design events into a Design Month in August? It’s a time of year when people are paying attention and resigned to being indoors. Last Saturday’s Saturday Indesign, (a biannual initiative supported by Raj Nandan's Indesign publishing group since the demise of Designers Saturday) is an industry day focussed on commercial showroom visits, and effectively already part of it. The biannual (?) Sydney Esquisse, which has never managed to achieve its own critical mass, the Object Gallery sponsored St Margarets Architecture and Design Festival (September again?), and various initiatives by Marrickville Council (where many artists and designers actually live and work because of more affordable rents) could be too. Then there are the various design awards run by the DIA, AGDA, and Inside magazine. Individual organisations can’t do it all alone. It need an overarching organization, to say nothing of policy vision and funding at state government level.

Shoot me down if you think this is a naïve and utopian vision. Perhaps spreading disparate events across the year is better? But while I'm making rash suggestions, what about Elizabeth Farrelly in the NSW upper house as Minsiter for Design? Her meetings with Frank Sartor would certainly be interesting.

A toute a l'heure.

Style Notes for Australia Day

Amid the unseemly wrangle over the use or misuse the Australian flag, few articles have made as much sense as Neil McMahon's amusingly ironic story 'Red-faced, white skin, so true blue' (SMH January 26), which deals in large part with problems inherent in Les Hawkins' (among others') design for the blue ensign. Ausflag's Harold Scruby is not the only one to think that "... the flag has to go. It divides as much as it unites". It used to be considered quite patriotic to remove the Union Jack from the corner of the ensign – not something you see so much these days. But Canada did it officially, without becoming a republic or dispensing with the Queen as head of state, and for good reason - the maple leaf flag is a beautiful design original which unites all Canadians.

Nothing sums up the Australian conundrum so well as the uniquely horrible stylistic clash of a busy yellow and green Wallabies shirt worn with a cloak (or sometimes toga) of the blue ensign, where the Union Jack falls inevitably over the shoulder. Admit it, they just don't go. Style disaster! Especially when added to this is sometimes the boxing kangaroo, or even (on at least one sighting) the Eureka flag. And what is it with this cloak/toga thing anyway? Are these kids all unconsciously emulating Pauline Hanson's iconic portrait, draped Boadicea-like, carrot hair aflame, in the ensign of the Federated Australian Dominions?

I had the enjoyable experience of spending part of Australia Day at a gathering in Cronulla's Gunnamatta Park – as culturally diverse a microcosm of Australia as you will find anywhere. The knots of fair-haired youngsters draped in the flag elicited only a diffident curiosity among the picnicking thousands of 'non-blondes'. It was as if there was a polite acknowledgment that, bizarre as it might seem, this was one tribe's traditional attire, and good luck to 'em. The only moment of tension I witnessed all day was the unedifying sight of of group of cloaked and plainly beered-up (blonde) kids on the ferry wharf, sporting 'If you don't love it, leave' t-shirts and slabs of VB, making half-hearted remarks about what was obviously a party of Asian tourists innocently spending their dollars in the Shire.

But back to the question of style. Informal soundings about the stylistic wisdom of wearing the Aussie flag, among younger (3rd or 4th generation) Australians of Italian, Greek, Israeli, Maori, Samoan, Indian, Lebanese... even Irish heritage... elicit an almost unanimous view that it is just so... well, uncool, in baby boomer talk. "Really, really daggy'" was also the quintessentially Australian view of not a few Aussies of Anglo-Celtic descent. These comments, ostensibly about youthful style, are revealing. What they tell us is that many patriotic Australians don't feel much love for Les Hawkins' flag design. Yet no-one I know of has a problem with the Southern Cross. It's cool. It's fully sick in fact. So the Union Jack is obviously the problem, but not just the emblem. It's the combinaton of colours – they're just so... dare I say un-Australian? So British. They don't relate to our landscape or our psyche. Where's the ochre of our deserts? The green of our verdant forests? The gold of our beaches and sandstone cliffs? The blue of the Pacific and Indian Oceans? The problem is that with its inbuilt connotations of Empire, the ensign in danger of being perceived as the emblem of only one cultural group within our society – the dominant Anglo-Celtic group. And in times of insecurity about terrorism, globalisation and migration, that group increasingly, literally wears it in a possessive way that can seem to say "...we're Anglo, we got here first, we've got the best land, and WE will decide who comes here... ". Ask Aborigines what they think about that one. One quip I overheard was that Australia Day could be cheekily re-dubbed from 'Invasion Day' to "Fear of Invasion Day'.

Now don't get me wrong. There are tasteful and patriotic ways to sport the ensign. In Cronulla one impressive islander matron wore it as a king of giant hairpin, fluttering above her head, like a galleon in full sail. Who will not confess to a thrill of pride when the horsemen galloped into Stadium Australia to commence the Olympic Opening Ceremony? There is something timeless and reassuring about the flag billowing majestically above Parliament House, or the pennant fluttering discreetly on the Gubernatorial limousine. But I contend we would feel this no less, or perhaps even more deeply, if our flag was simply a yellow Southern Cross on a field of azure – an obvious choice, surely? Minimal change. And something everyone can relate to as a great Australian emblem - uniting us under southern skies. But as clothing? Perhaps not – it would still clash terribly with the Wallabies shirt.

If symbols are as important as the debate seems to indicate, then let's start by finding one we can all love.