Historicist: Life in Wartime
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
The Liberal Party's new logo, courtesy of the Liberal Party of Canada.
The Liberal Party of Canada's national convention in Vancouver this past weekend produced few surprises, with delegates officially crowning Toronto Member of Parliament Michael Ignatieff as leader of the once-mighty red machine. One development that did catch our attention, however, was the unveiling on Saturday of the party's new logo, which replaces the maple-leaf-as-rising-sun insignia in use since 2004. According to the accompanying news release, the new logo "symbolizes a re-energized Liberal Party emerging from a process of renewal engaging all Liberal members." A fascinating claim, given that the new wordmark is nothing more than the word "Liberal" in Times New Roman, emblazoned with a maple leaf that appears to have been cribbed from the cover of Maclean's.
Perhaps the goal is to encourage voters to think of the Liberals as Canada's default ruling party, the one you turn to when you're too lazy to try something different. The Grits' recent history, however, hints that stylistic ineptitude may be to blame: the death knell for December's abortive coalition between the Liberals, New Democrats, and Bloc Québécois was then-leader Stéphane Dion's amateurish televised pitch to voters, an attempt that, compared to Prime Minister Harper's highly-polished appeal, seemed to have been transmitted to TV stations via Skype.
If the new Liberal regime wants to prove that they have learnt their aesthetic lesson, rebranding themselves with an insignia that could have been created in thirty seconds on Michael Ignatieff's laptop is not the way to go. That being said, the new logo could have been far, far worse:
Image by Jerad Gallinger/Torontoist.
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Helvetica is even worse!
IANAT (I am not a typographer) but it's not quite Times New Roman. The dot on the i is too low; the tops of the long stems (i,b,r,l) don't have a horizontal cut-off and the serif on the a doesn't flick up.
Their 1990s logo always reminded me of the KFC branding of the time.
Underwhelming.
WhatTheFont identifies it as any number of Times Romans. The dot on the i has certainly been lowered, probably to avoid the b's serif.
to be honest I've never liked the LPC/LPO use of symbols - the red/maple leaf and trillium have been politicized and this leads to the ridiculous sight of the Government of Canada being turned blue by the Tories and the McGuinty govt spending squillions to replace Ontario signs and stationery with a trillium which closely resembles the LPO logo. I realise there's no chance of the Liberals giving up red but I think it shows the kind of arrogance they are often accused of (natural governing party, etc.)
Both parties can change their logo as many times as they want, but I'll still just end up seeing a theatre act of the Bloods vs. the Crips arguing over who's pocket protector looks better. Nothings different, nothing changes.
"A fascinating claim, given that the new wordmark is nothing more than the word "Liberal" in Times New Roman, emblazoned with a maple leaf that appears to have been cribbed from the cover of Maclean's."
lol. AWESOME.
Jonathan: the Charest-era logo for the federal PCs was an even more blatant KFC ripoff, albeit in blue rather than red.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1e/Parti_PC_Party_Canada_1996.svg/250px-Parti_PC_Party_Canada_1996.svg.png
I actually don't mind this present Liberal logo: clean, straightforward, and a bit back-to-the-future as the Liberals have used Times New Roman-esque serif fonts in the past. And if it smacks a little of "playing it safe", well, given its predecessor--perhaps the most hideous logo offered by any major federal political party in recent decades--I don't blame the Grits...