GAINESVILLE – Gainesville will soon be displaying an updated branding element: a new city logo.
Members of the Gainesville City Council were given a sneak preview of the city’s new “alternate” logo at the end of May; on Tuesday the design was revealed publicly at the city council’s voting session.
“Alternate” is the tag given to the design by Gainesville City Manager Bryan Lackey. He told council members the logo was not replacing the city’s seal. “The crest will always be the city’s seal,” Lackey explained, “but having an ‘alternate’ logo to go with it is (our goal).
“This is what they have come up with,” Lackey told the council as the new design appeared on an overhead monitor during the May 28th work session. “A rising ’G’ coming out of either the water or the mountains, depending upon how you want to look at the waves down at the bottom of that. We thought that was a nice touch.”
Gainesville Public Relations Assistant Deb Gravitt says the design’s inspiration was the location of the city, being at the heart of Lake Lanier and at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Gravitt said, “The city wanted a logo that incorporated the feel and essence of the new gateway signage. We loved the wave design, but felt it was not an identifiable logo. We contacted Mr. Vaught (Todd Vaught, owner of Atlanta-based Confluence Design Company) asking him to design some new brand ideas that would reflect our city.”
Gravitt adds, “He brought to us some fantastic ideas that would give us that identifiable brand we were looking for all the while consolidating it with the gateway signage, the wave in our printed material and making all the components cohesive.”
While the new logo will soon begin appearing on city buildings, banners and printed communications, Lackey said he is particularly excited about the new logo appearing on the portable garbage cans the city will be providing for all its trash pick-up customers.
Mayor Danny Dunagan teased Lackey about that fact. “That’s a good thing to be excited about,” Dunagan said with a laugh.
“I like the logo,” Lackey responded. “It has ‘The City of Gainesville…Established 1821’. I just think that’s really cool to show people. We’re almost 200-years old. We’re a real city; we’re full service. We’re not just a city that cropped up from a subdivision that had a shopping mall in front of it and called itself a city.”
“We’re a real city,” Lackey said with pride. “We’ve been here a long time.”
