Will the new Fort Collins logo protect our open space?
Posted by 3Dsound at Wednesday, February 27, 2008 6:47 PM and is filed under Darin Atteberry,Criticism,Fort Collins,North Star Destination Strategies,Poudre River,Marketing,Graphic Design,Colorado,community separators,Open Space,North Star 
Colorado (updated below)
Understanding Fort Collins: Glen Colton (25-Feb-08), Community separators are critical to our cities [available for sale online], The Coloradoan [Fort Collins, Colorado], page A7, online at coloradoan
The Census Bureau classifies Fort Collins and Loveland as a single Metropolitan Statistical Area, but that's not how it feels on the ground.
When you're driving north from Loveland to Fort Collins, you pass through open space separating the two cities. To the east, you see broad swaths of agricultural land and prairie, and to the west, you see the hogbacks and foothills of the Rocky Mountains. As you approach Fort Collins, you see Horsetooth Rock rising above the city. Horsetooth is a landmark that's more humble than the Flatirons of Boulder but every bit as distinguishing of this place.
That's why for the past 30 years the Fort Collins city logo has included a depiction of Horsetooth as an integral part of the design. Whether you like the logo or not (I'm ambivalent about it), it connotes one place only: Fort Collins, Colorado.
But now, the city government has contracted with North Star Destination Strategies ("Community branding experts") to develop a new brand and marketing campaign for the city. As a part of that, North Star has created a new city logo, which – if you believe the letters to the editor of the Coloradoan and the blog articles you can read online – the people of Fort Collins reject as being unrepresentative of the city.
Criticism of the logo often cites confusion over the "meaning" of the brown and blue swooshes. According to North Star, the brown swoosh represents the Fort Collins foothills, and the blue swoosh represents the Cache la Poudre River, which runs through the north part of town. Many people enjoy the river for recreation, and historically, the river has been important for the city's development. But few residents would consider the river as a defining city landmark (especially when compared with Horsetooth and historic Old Town).
Graphically, North Star's logo falls flat. People don't get it. And can you blame them? Fort Collins sits on the western edge of the shortgrass steppe, which is a semi-arid biome. It doesn't rain much here – and perhaps North Star has heard about the scarcity of water and the "water wars" in the West? we're combatants in that – so, the color blue is the last color that anyone thinks of, when they think of Fort Collins. As others have pointed out, North Star's brown and blue swooshes would probably work better for a city located near an ocean.
North Star's tag-line is also problematic. "Where renewal is a way of life." No resident would ever say such a thing about the place where they live. It's an outsider's view. It's a sentiment that might capture something about living in Fort Collins, but it mostly represents the outsider's projection onto the city.
Furthermore, Fort Collins already has a tag-line, one that's so ingrained into the city's culture that people use it and don't worry about what it means: "Choice City." Why did North Star's experts in community branding reject Fort Collins' own expression of itself?
Fort Collins' identify – and the choices available here – revolve around the intimate tie between the built and natural environments. In a commentary published in Monday's Coloradoan, Glen Colton expressed a similar view this way: "Fort Collins recognizes that our natural environment, historic Old Town, cultural arts and Colorado State University are key to our unique identity and economic vitality." Colton's commentary is reproduced below (with highlighting and bolding mine).
Colton emphasizes that Fort Collins' identify depends on the city being a destination on the landscape and separated from neighboring towns and cities by agricultural land and prairie – by open space. Open space is crucial to maintaining Fort Collins' unique character – the character that draws people and businesses here. Yet, open space is currently under threat from unrestrained development, especially along Interstate 25. As Colton explains, the problem with unrestrained development isn't just the elimination of open space but the erosion of Fort Collins' separate identity from that of its neighbors.
Which brings us back to North Star's proposed new logo for Fort Collins. North Star has a history of working with Colorado cities. In fact, just last year, North Star created a new logo for Greeley, which is 30 miles to the southeast of Fort Collins. Disturbingly, North Star's logo for Greeley shares an awful lot of similarities with North Star's logo for Fort Collins:
• brown color
• blue color
• city name in blue
• two swooshes
The evidence is damning: The Fort Collins logo is derivative of Greeley's.
North Star betrays its ignorance of Fort Collins by creating a logo that blurs the city's identity with that of its neighbor – the very thing that's recognized as being most damaging to those attributes of Fort Collins that set the city apart.
Community Separators are Critical to our Cities
In our part of Northern Colorado, retaining scenic view sheds and physical open space separators between neighboring communities has long been an important regional goal.
People have recognized that it is important both economically and psychologically to maintain separate identities and keep a part of the western heritage that makes this area special.
Public support for separators in surveys exceeds 75 percent, and having open space and natural areas is one of the main reasons we can attract top companies and employees.
Unfortunately, the long-planned-for community separators for Fort Collins, Timnath and Windsor on both sides of Interstate 25 south of Harmony Road will be lost if current plans reach fruition.
To the east in Timnath, instead of agricultural lands and open views to the Poudre River, we would see an almost continuous strip development along I-25 in Timnath's growth area.
Further compounding the situation, both Windsor and Loveland have plans for continuous development all the way to the Big Thompson River, for a total of about nine miles of uninterrupted ugly development reminiscent of areas like north Denver.
In Fort Collins, scenic mountain views would be blocked and the natural feel of the area completely eliminated if a proposed large, high-density, high-rise project on the southwest corner of I-25 and Harmony is approved.
The primary gateway to our town would no longer symbolize the importance of the natural environment to our heritage, our economy and our future. Instead, we would have a development that would look more like the Denver Tech Center. This is a complete contradiction to our community's vision and planning, which helped us be named "the best place in the country to live."
Fort Collins recognizes that our natural environment, historic Old Town, cultural arts and Colorado State University are key to our unique identity and economic vitality. The city's comprehensive plan states, "Community separators will preserve the rural and natural landscape between our communities, maintaining separation between cities and towns."
The 2007 Timnath comprehensive plan talks about the importance of community separators but then violates its intent by designating high-intensity land use along I-25.
Three plans for community separators in Northern Colorado have been prepared in the past 10 years. The 1995 plan for the area between Fort Collins and Loveland has been successfully implemented because of cooperation between the communities. In 2003, a jointly developed plan preserving the rural character of the area between Fort Collins, Timnath and Windsor was completed. This plan has not been recognized as valid by Timnath's current town board.
None of this potential development has yet occurred. Now is the perfect time to show true comprehensive regional cooperation among the three communities in protecting our economic, environmental and aesthetic health.
Cooperation must involve good land-use planning, sales-tax revenue sharing, open lands and community separator preservation, and regional transportation.
We have a choice – to look like the worst parts of Denver sprawl or be someplace special. What will our legacy be?
Glen Colton is working toward making Fort Collins a sustainable community. He has 23 years of financial experience in high-tech companies.
UPDATE, Friday, March 7, 2008 and Sunday, March 9, 2008: The Coloradoan reports on its front page this morning (07-Mar-08) that the Fort Collins City Manager Darin Atteberry has decided to halt the implementation of the new city logo. Bravo for Atteberry for making the right decision (although it seems he was the one who originally signed-off on adopting the logo). A Coloradoan editorial (09-Mar-08) claims that, prior to approval, the logo was reviewed by Arts Alive, the Downtown Development Authority, Fort Collins Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce.
Here's what Mayor Pro-Tem Kelly Ohlson said about citizen reaction to the logo (Coloradoan, 07-Mar-08):
Ohlson said he heard negative feedback from a wide variety of people from different segments of the community. ¶ "The citizens don't like it," Ohlson said. "The city needs to accept that, and now we need to try and fix it. I have never had so much citizen dissatisfaction with an action the city has taken since I was elected and I believe they are right." ¶ The new logo design cost the city $2,600 taken from a larger $78,000 economic stimulus effort to "brand" the city.
And finally, for an overview of the logo's technical deficiencies, here's an anonymous critique originally published as a comment at Andy Bosselman's blog in Denver (Andy Bosselman [25-Feb-08], The ugly new $80,000 branding effort for Fort Collins, online at andybosselman.blogspot.com [accessed 07-Mar-08]):
[L]et's be straight forward here. It's awful. From a production standpoint is has issues. Difficult colors to reproduce, no contrast. It has small gaps that will plug up when reproduced on apparel. The tagline is too thin. The curves are janky. It's rookie. And from a very basic understanding of good branding, you have to know how to use it in all mediums. This shows that the company that created is just not good.
That's just from a reproduction perspective. From a design standpoint it is subjective. But great branding agencies know what works. Let's be objective here, does this hold up next to Apple's logo, Target's logo?
It's a critique that applies to many of North Star's logos.
UPDATE, Wednesday, April 2, 2008: North Star sure likes to beef-up its logos by using swooshes. And can you blame them? I mean, what other design strategy could a North Star graphic artist possibly use, to create the illusion of movement and excitement?Check out the North Star logo for Fort Wayne, Indiana (reproduced to the left), which Fort Wayne unveiled in January 2007. Have you seen those swooshes before? I have. They're identical to the ones North Star uses in the Fort Collins logo. And how about that tag line, "Room for dreams." It's as cringe-inducing as, "Where renewal is a way of life."
So, given the precedents of the North Star logos for Greeley and Fort Wayne, the Fort Collins logo is derivative and not unique. But Fort Collins paid $2,500 for it.
And as an aside, check out the webpage for the Fort Wayne Convention and Visitor's Bureau, and see how awkward and unpersuasive the Fort Wayne logo looks when deployed electronically, as North Star intended. Weigh those unsatisfactory qualities against the critiicism of the current Fort Collins logo that City Manager Darin Atteberry made in today's Coloradoan (City seeks feedback on logo [02-Apr-08]): "The old design has strong community recognition, yet the text is virtually unreadable. This poses significant problems because the goal of a strong logo is name recognition. Logos should also be simple and easy-to-read representations (literal or abstract) of a community's best qualities." I wish Atteberry had been as critical of the North Star logo for Fort Collins, because there's no reason to think that it would perform any better electronically (or otherwise) than its geeky cousin in Fort Wayne.
Have a look at my coverage of the Fort Collins logo affair.
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