filed under City Hall | Design
The Creative Capital?
4:47PM ON
03/31/2009
BY
Kevin Reardon
Yesterday there was an interesting article on the front page of the Providence Journal. It was about how Providence is changing it’s image once again. We are no longer the “Renaissance City” we are the “Creative Capital”. In order to get this done North Star Destination Strategies from Nashville, TN went hard to work to change the image of Providence.
The article discussed how some people in the local creative community feel slighted that an outside agency was picked. They say it undermines the campaign and the effectiveness of the idea as a whole. I however have decided to nit-pick something much more trivial. The logo. The logo that is now going to represent our fair city is an orange P. A single capital P, and it’s orange. I’m no expert in branding but I do recall a certain institution that already uses an orange P, and that is of course Princeton University. So what I gathered from the article is that we payed North Star seventy five thousand dollars, and besides some mundane alliteration all we received was an iconic logo that already exists. Of course there is this:
“It’s a destructible icon,” says Cournoyer. “You can do whatever you want with it so long as it generally keeps its form. The P can be a singular item to rally people. It opens the door up to self-expression.”
Here is the article in full.
March 31st, 2009 at 5:58PM
Clay Johnson Says:
I don’t think too many people know Princton’s logo. At least I didn’t.
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March 31st, 2009 at 7:19PM
Alex Says:
I just wanted to point out that although the company in charge of the project was from out of state, they subcontracted the work to local agencies. Like the new website, for example.
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March 31st, 2009 at 7:51PM
rob Says:
the new website is horrible! nothing about its design or color scheme (gray) says anything about creativity or the arts. here’s to another disappointment.
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March 31st, 2009 at 7:57PM
mickey Says:
regardless of who was hired to subcontract what, i think ultimately the change from the “renaissance city” to the “creative capital” is a load of embarrassing, sweaty bullshit, an unparalleled waste of time, and a phenomenal waste of money. also, that website blows. sorry, locally subcontracted agency. i’m sure you could do better if you cared.
while my seething rage toward this overhaul will probably impede my ability to coherently argue against it (and i guess it doesn’t really matter since it’s happening anyway) i’m just going to go over the list of things i hate about it silently in my head.
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March 31st, 2009 at 10:39PM
Beth Comery Says:
OMG that website is horrible — the most uninteresting home page imaginable. No one will ever click on anything, although I did out of curiosity. I soon ran into words like ‘utilize’ and ‘catalyze’ and ’synergistic’, so it’s that kind of writing. There are some pictures of men in suits being creative at some kind of a meeting. At the top some pictures of things in Providence scroll by with text flashing on way too fast to read, but who cares. And the mayor’s name is all over the place. Just the look of it is so bush league.
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April 1st, 2009 at 9:55AM
Frymaster Says:
Harshness.
As a member of the local agency that made the website, I’ll stand up and take the beating. I cannot speak to the logo/tag line issue; it was presented to us as a fait accompli. So, Alex, the website was actually not a part of the logo design process/contract.
The website was created as part of the public engagement process that included community forums last year and the recently completed series of six studio sessions. It’s was built off the Joomla platform to facilitate users uploading documents, creating links, comments, etc.
On the issue of website design, let me share these thoughts:
1 - Agencies design to client specifications.
2 - There’s no accounting for taste.
3 - Institutions are as institutions do.
It’s unreasonable to expect a city agency to produce a website that would deliver a design thrill to the more, say, adventurous demographics found here on the Dose. You think the website is “horrible”, Rob and Beth? Fair enough. But please bear in mind that functionality, not design, was the overriding development criterion.
All of that said, this project - at least as we’ve been involved - is not about a website, but about a series of public and private meetings designed to inform the city’s creation of a cultural plan to integrate with the city’s comprehensive plan. So it’s not really all that sexy.
But it has been productive. Attendance at the studios was SRO, and even the most artsy types had to admit that it was refreshing and almost a little cathartic to (finally) have direct input on a project that affects them. I can’t stress enough how much these meetings did to create new connections across the creative sector. There was talk about how much the Geek Dinners have done for that community, and how the creatives could do something similar. (Enter Pecha Kucha.)
So let’s talk about that website again, but now in the context of its relationship to the overall project. The website was envisioned as an active, user-driven site that would host a robust conversation about the project. In that capacity it was not a success, and all criticism is appropriate. The site got very little user contribution, and in that we are disappointed. The site did its job of holding materials and posting event notices, managing event registrations, etc., but the bloggy part never really got off the ground.
Why was use so limited? There are probably a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that nobody was as fully vested in the project as the city was. This was very much of an extra added addition to most people’s lives and schedules. The hope was that the in-person meetings would generate enough momentum that people would want to carry on the conversation via the blog. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way.
Was there a usage barrier associated with a web design that has a more institutional look and feel than some users may care for? I would venture that that played a role, hence validating some of the criticism here. But I think the vestiture issue was more important.
Back to the cultural plan and the meetings — How much of what anybody suggested will become part of the cultural plan, let alone what will actually come to fruition? Creation of the cultural plan itself will happen inside City Hall with another consultant, not us. So generating results is really out of our hands.
Or is it?
The experience of most artists is one of self-creation and self-support. It’s fairly laughable to think that the Dirt Palace women would have waited for the city to give them a big grant to get their project off the ground. They just took “massive action”, as they say in the business world.
Our work in community development has led us to some interesting and effective techniques, including the “ownership” approach developed in Chicago by Jim Capraro. This approach creates massive action by not allowing any project into a plan unless it has an owner. And projects with owners almost always get completed.
Many of the initiatives that have come out of this process can be done with virtually no municipal involvement. We at New Commons are advocating that “the community” continue to engage and, ultimately, act on select initiatives regardless of city participation. And with that in mind, we hope the web site lives on past the creation of the cultural plan so it can fulfill its purpose as forum for the creative community.
Hey, Mickey. Do you think its a lack of caring? Do have at…
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April 1st, 2009 at 10:22AM
Jim Says:
I happen to like the simple, yet elegant look of the Creative Providence website. It’s clean, it’s easy to navigate and it doesn’t have big boxes that say “advertise here” (I understand the need for advertisements, but wait until you can fill them before putting the boxes up, considering they’ve been like that since the re-design).
As for the orange P, Princeton did not come to mind. Maybe that’s because I’m not ivy league educated. Or maybe it’s because I just don’t care about Princeton.
And before you knock the design of my site, I know it sucks (planning a redesign, just need time). I’m not a designer, but the site is usable. I generally don’t care about design, as usability is far more important.
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April 1st, 2009 at 10:48AM
Matt Jerzyk Says:
The first thing I thought of when I saw Mayor Cicilline wearing the orange “P” pin on his lapel was, “I thought he went to Brown, not Princeton…”
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April 1st, 2009 at 11:16AM
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