I grew up in North Philadelphia. It’s not a pretty place, but it’s where I’m from. And my Philadelphia pride goes deep.1 Although I live in SF now, there are three times a year when I can still put on a Phillies cap and walk into AT&T Park to root for my beloved hometown team. (It’s worth pointing out that I’d never have the cojones to walk into a Philadelphia park wearing enemy colors.)
This morning I read about the Philadelphia rebranding on the always informative Brand New. Although I agree with author Kosal Sen’s main point that the logo sucks, I disagree with him on one very important point:
Philadelphia’s history does not start and end with the Liberty Bell. Any visiting tourist knows all the other historic must-sees like Betsy Ross’s house, Independence Hall, and Penn’s Landing. Conceptually, the choice of using the Bell could not be more uninspiring and obvious.
Bullshit.
We own the hell out of that bell. You can’t look at it and NOT think Philadelphia. Few cities are lucky enough to have as strong an iconic representation as that bell.
Our informal office survey came up with this short list:
- Paris and the Eiffel Tower
- St. Louis and the Gateway Arch
- Seattle and the Space Needle
- Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell
I’m sure there are a few more, go ahead and comment away, but you get the point. (There was one lone vote for San Antonio and the Alamo, and before all you New Yorkers start complaining, the Statue of Liberty is more an icon of America and not the city per se. Enjoy your apple.)
The issue here is on Mr. Sen’s use of ‘uninspiring and obvious.’ By which I believe Mr. Sen means it was not a ‘clever’ choice. And I’d agree with that. It’s not clever, but neither does it have to be. The goal of design is to nail the problem, not showcase the cleverness of the designer. There are times when the solution to the problem is such a ridiculous slam dunk that cleverness only gets in the way of good work.
The problem with the new Philadelphia brand isn’t the bell. It’s the crap execution. No doubt impaired by the committee of 652 that oversaw the project and came up with that ridiculous tagline.
Don’t blame the bell though.
1. As proven by our I’m not angry, I’m from Philly t-shirt. Featuring the Liberty Bell.
2. …and by the way, anytime 65 Philadelphians get together to come up with a city tagline and it doesn’t come back as “Phuck New York!” you know you have a problem.
Written by Mike Monteiro on December 8, 2009 | 
27 comments so far. Add yours below.
d says:
Or, from the second episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: "Come to Philly for the crack", on a t-shirt no less.
December 8, 2009 4:42 PM
Ed says:
Perhaps the bell has significance to Americans, but to most people outside the US have probably never heard of it. I visited Philadelphia last year from the UK and really enjoyed my stay, but visiting the bell was not something that interested me - perhaps it should have, but I had/have no idea what it's significance is, except for being somehow related to independence.
It's certainly not up there with the Eifle Tower, Sydney Opera House, Big Ben, Seattle's Space Needle, Empire State Building, San Fransisco's Trams or Moscow's Kremlin on the things-you-associate-with-places list.
Most people doing word association with Philadelphia (here in the UK at least) would probably say "Cream Cheese", but that wouldn't really make a good logo!
The bell potentially makes a good icon, perhaps it's the thing that Philly is best known for (after the cheese). The final logo is pretty bad though. I guess as Philly is having massive financial problems, they did it on the cheap!
December 8, 2009 5:01 PM
Hamranhansenhansen says:
If the logo is not clever then the words should be. "I'm not angry, I'm from Philly" actually made me want to take a trip from SF to Philly to get some of that special East Coast gentility. But "Life, Liberty and ..." Zzzzzz.
And how appropriate that Trebuchet is named after a weapon.
More monuments:
* San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge
* Washington, DC and the Washington monument or Capital building or White House
* London, England and the London Bridge
* Hollywood and the Hollywood sign
* New York City and the Manhattan skyline
* Toronto and the CN Tower
December 8, 2009 5:05 PM
jonb says:
San Francisco : Golden Gate?
Here in Seattle, the Capitol Hill neighborhood--the hippest and most diverse of Seattle neighborhoods--just had a new logo/brand created.
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/12/02/meet-the-new-capitol-hill-logo
I feel your pain, but at least the new Philadelphia logo doesn't look like a first-year typography student threw it together, last minute.
December 8, 2009 5:06 PM
Anonymous says:
Taco Bell?
December 8, 2009 5:14 PM
Mike Monteiro says:
I'm wondering how many of the people stating that the GG Bridge is as iconic as the Liberty Bell could pick it out of a line-up of 5 similar bridge silhouettes.
December 8, 2009 5:23 PM
Automatt says:
It's creepy how much it reminds me of the logo for phone company. Remember that one?
December 8, 2009 5:37 PM
Ben says:
Philadelphia has a lot in common with Boston's preferred consensus.
December 8, 2009 5:41 PM
SSteve says:
Mike: Some of us could pick it out by silhouette, but generally it's presented in color which makes it a dead giveaway. You'd be surprised at how much that damn bridge means to us native San Franciscans.
December 8, 2009 5:53 PM
Stephen Caver says:
I agree with the thrust of this post. Good design doesn't need to be clever, it needs to communicate the message clearly and quickly. Clever design is often designers porn, aesthetically sophisticated and interesting but often confusing. It has a place, but typically not for a major US city.
One nitpick of Hamranhansenhansen's comment. Hollywood is a district in Los Angeles and not a city itself, so the Hollywood sign is more a symbol of LA. That said, the Hollywood district is probably as famous as Los Angeles itself so the sign could mean Los Angeles or Hollywood.
December 8, 2009 5:54 PM
Dan says:
Totally, completely agree. The "uninspired and obvious" line practically poked me in the eye with the stinging finger of design snobbery.
@jonb: Yikes, is that a bad logo. I'd be embarrassed to unveil it.
December 8, 2009 6:02 PM
Ed says:
Hamranhansenhansen: You say London with London Bridge, and you actually probably mean Tower Bridge. London Bridge is an unremarkable 1970's bridge just up the river from Tower Bridge.
Compare!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:London_Bridge_Illuminated.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tower_bridge_London_Twilight_-_November_2006.jpg
As someone from the UK, the Golden Gate Bridge is far more iconic than the Liberty Bell - I'd honestly never heard of the Liberty Bell before I visited Philly, and I would bet if I did a straw poll at work tomorrow, the Golden Gate Bridge would be recognized by more people.
I guess this just shows how much our own history and culture affects how important we consider things to be.
December 8, 2009 6:13 PM
Ed says:
Oh reminds me off the Cluckin' Bell logo from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
http://www.cluckinbellhappychicken.com/ [WARNING: Sound!]
December 8, 2009 6:15 PM
Mike Monteiro says:
@ed: I'm not surprised UK readers aren't familiar with the Liberty Bell. It's one of the icons of The American Revolution and was probably kept out of your history books.
December 8, 2009 6:51 PM
Devon Shaw says:
We Seattleites own the hell out of that Space Needle.
That is all.
December 8, 2009 8:39 PM
coyote says:
@Mike Monteiro: The point is not that they wouldn't pick the GG bridge out of a line-up of 5 similar bridge silhouettes, it's that they'd say they were all the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and not (say) the Akashi-Kaikyō Bridge of Kobe, or the Tsing Ma Bridge of Hung Kong.
December 8, 2009 9:51 PM
Ed says:
@Mike Monteiro: We studied the American War of Independence at school, impartially as far as I remember. Perhaps it was mentioned, but I don't remember it. The point is that it doesn't have the cultural significance for people in the UK. Things taught in history lessons rarely do!
I think it's wrong to suggest there's any kind of bias in how history is taught, here in the UK at least. There's bias as to what is taught, based on how significant an event is - that's what being a historian is - filtering through information to find that which most significantly contributed towards future events.
I'm not sure the UK has anything equivalent to The Bell, I guess because we have a longer documented history. Perhaps if the English Civil War had been successful long-term we would have. Instead we're quite proud of having the Romans, Vikings and Normans trampling around here - but not a huge amount to directly show for it.
December 9, 2009 2:20 AM
Alex Basson says:
Chicago's skyline, framed as it is by the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Building, is pretty iconic. Also Wrigley Field.
December 9, 2009 3:30 AM
ed says:
@Mike "kept out of your history books"? You must be confusing the UK educational system with someone else's. I wonder how many Americans would recognise it, as opposed to thinking it was a fast food or phone company logo?
December 9, 2009 4:28 AM
stompy says:
@Ed: I believe what Hamranhansenhansen meant to say was
Lake Havasu, Arizona and the London Bridge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:London_Bridge,_Lake_Havasu,_Arizona,_2003.jpg
December 9, 2009 8:11 AM
Merlin says:
You're so good at this, Mike. Really well put. Really well done.
People hired to think about stuff like this should either care as much as you or get way exposed to people who do.
"Branding" is merely an abstract, intellectual design challenge unless you understand what people really care about. Then you realize it's super-complicated, even personal.
Good work.
December 9, 2009 8:25 AM
Fritz says:
You forgot the single most iconic city image on the planet - Knoxville, TN's Sunsphere. Has the Liberty Bell been prominently featured in a Simpsons episode? Huh? Has it?
(okay, well, maybe the most iconic city image that I can personally see out my office window at the moment)
December 9, 2009 8:37 AM
Travis Butler says:
"Good design doesn't need to be clever, it needs to communicate the message clearly and quickly. Clever design is often designers porn, aesthetically sophisticated and interesting but often confusing."
Amen. For another example, see the recent Tropicana package redesign fiasco; they took a package design/logo that may have been old-fashioned - but was also iconic and instantly recognized - and replaced it with a package that was more 'artistic' but also generic, lacking in brand identity, and easy to confuse with similar OJ packages.
A short time later, they went back to the original packaging. :)
December 9, 2009 8:44 AM
Kimball says:
I'm just relieved that they trademarked that tag line! I mean, other cities might have otherwise tried to similarly use the Declaration of Independence to embarrass themselves the way Philly has. I love the Liberty Bell, and when I visited Philidelphia, seeing it was a highlight. It's perfect for the city logo, too bad about the childish execution.
December 9, 2009 8:57 AM
Johnnie says:
I'm not sure about the association of the Liberty Bell and Philadelphia. I know the Liberty Bell is located in Philadelphia, but if the question was worked the other way—“What iconic images come to mind when you think of Philadelphia”—I can’t honestly say “Liberty Bell” would spring immediately to mind. Philly is sort of like a hash table value you know exists but you can’t invoke any of its keys. Or something.
I’m also not entirely sure that iconic necessarily makes for good logo. Important things to consider when iconifying an abstract concept are the icon’s connotations. To me, Liberty Bell makes me think of Benjamin Franklin, a mysterious crack, and the concept of “liberty,” this last with a strong association to Samuel Francis Smith’s hymn “My Country 'Tis of Thee.”
The song was first published in 1832, nearly 20 years before abolition. On review, then, my associations with liberty through the Liberty Bell is shot through with a sense of hypocrisy. Zooming 177 years into the future to 2009, when I think about “Liberty” I think about the assaults on civil liberties by the Bush administration and the continuance of the same by the “liberal” Obama administration.
With this in mind, any municipal branding involving the concept “Liberty” has to be unintentionally ironic at best and deeply cynical at worst. Did the city of Philadelphia take this into consideration?
Branding a city with an historical, familiar/predictable/cliché, hypocritical/cynical concept by using an iconic image seems like a bad idea to me. To paraphrase a different cliché, “I don't need instructions to tell me something sucks,” which the exactly what Philadelphia rebranding does.
December 9, 2009 9:47 AM
Chris says:
Ever since the semi-recent add-on of the Quadracci Pavilion (by Santiago Calatrava), The Milwaukee Art Museum has been our city's icon.
Most of us call this new portion The Calatrava. It's gorgeous.
December 10, 2009 10:37 AM
Michael McCracken says:
Late to the party, but I couldn't help it: more suggestions for some memorable city icons:
Sydney and its Opera House.
Rio and its Jesus
Pisa and its Tower
Rome and the Colosseum
Athens and the Acropolis
December 17, 2009 3:34 PM