Brantford mayor wants to hit pause on controversial new logo

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

In the case of the City of Brantford’s proposed new logo, it seems everyone has their own thousand words to say about the picture.

A quick survey of a city parking lot finds a wide array of opinions on the logo – which contains an exclamation mark, a stylized ‘B’ meant to represent the Grand River, and the slogan ‘Grand to Great’.

“I like it. It looks good with the exclamation mark. It blends well together,” says Jen Vandermeulen.

“I love the ‘Grand to Great’ – but the ‘B’, I don’t know. I’m not sure,” offers Carla Fabisiak.

“It’s OK. Overall I guess it’s a pretty basic, simple-looking logo,” suggests Rita Mork, who describes herself as “indifferent” to the design and unable to quickly remember the city’s current logo.

Michael Swanson, the artist who designed the current logo as part of a citywide contest, agrees that the time has come for a change – but says he’s no fan of the proposed design.

“Graphically, it’s not that bad – but it doesn’t tell me anything,” he says.

“It should show Brantford. It should relate to the Grand River somehow.”

The proposed design has brought forward opinions from every corner of Brantford – and with councillors set to vote on the design next week, Mayor Chris Friel says a new logo for the city should go back to the drawing board.

“The community’s too divided right now to proceed with it, and there a couple of issue with the logo that we’re not going to get past,” he tells CTV News.

“We want this to be the best possible. We want people to be able to say ‘That’s great,’ not ‘That looks like a piece of ClipArt.’”

Brantford paid a marketing company $78,000 for the logo and other rebranding work.

Friel says there’s no issue with the rest of the work the company has done – only the logo.