The current Stratford District Council corporate logo is red, black and white.
The current Stratford District Council corporate logo is red, black and white.
The Stratford District Council logo is set to be green and blue.
At Tuesday's policy and services council meeting, elected members were asked to choose one of seven designs for a proposed new corporate logo for the council. Their pick will now be taken to October's full council meeting tobe formally adopted.
The majority of elected members liked the design of this logo, which will now be taken to the next council meeting to be adopted.
At the meeting, elected members heard from Stratford District Council communications manager Gemma Gibson, who explained a recent brand audit had identified the need to refresh council's corporate brand, including the logo.
The corporate logo is not the same as the Stratford District promotional brand, which, with it's tagline "Stratford District - in the heart of Taranaki", was adopted in 2006.
The current Stratford District Council corporate logo has been in use since 1989, and was designed by Grant Bunyan, a local secondary school student at the time.
Gemma told elected members the brand audit had identified several issues with the current corporate logo, including a lack of adaptability of it for use on digital platforms. Other issues included inconsistency of use, with a range of fonts, colours and templates in use.
Option 6 featured the logo contained within the outer circle.
In order to be able to bring logo concept designs to elected members, council staff were first surveyed, and asked four key questions to identify what was needed. A summary of the feedback was provided to elected member in Gemma's report.
This feedback agreed a brand refresh was needed, and the mountain was the most popular choice when it came to imagery. Other popular images identified were the farming community, Forgotten World Highway and the Patea River.
Staff identified council values as being community focused, friendly, committed, professional and proud with the most popular colour palette being identified as natural environment shades of blues and greens. The report noted the second most popular colour palette was that of the traditional Stratford colours in terms of sporting teams and schools, being red, black and white.
With a design brief created from the feedback, three Taranaki designers were engaged to draw up logo concepts which were then narrowed down to a final selection of designs to be presented to elected members.
Councillors debated the merits of each of the final seven designs and Tuesday's meeting, with the majority preferring designs which had a realistic mountain outline and shape to it.
While elected members were happy with the colour palette of greens and blues, the actual shade of the green was questioned.
"I think it needs to be brighter, more vibrant, like our Taranaki grass," said councillor Peter Dalziel.
"Other regions may have grass that looks this pale, but Taranaki doesn't."
Councillor John Sandford agreed the final design needed to have a brighter green in it as well, and was also in favour of the logo design spreading out of the overall circle it was shaped around.
Councillor Vaughan Jones questioned the positioning of the river in the logo.
"To me it looks more like an ocean, not the Patea River. Could it go up the mountain more to be clearer?"
Some councillors were in favour of this logo, offered as option 1 in the report.
Councillors Amanda Harris and Gloria Webby both spoke in favour of the crisper, sharper lines in option one, saying they thought it was closer to the current logo.
Option 4 was put to the vote but was defeated, with a 6:5 vote against it.
Councillor Jono Erwood spoke in favour of option 4, and the option was put to the vote. it was narrowly defeated, with six councillors voting against it, and five in favour of it. The councillors who voted against it were Rick Coplestone, Min McKay, Vaughan Jones, Grant Boyde, Amanda Harris and Gloria Webby. A second motion was then put forward and passed in favour of option 7.
Option 7 is now set to be formally adopted at next month's council meeting.
