The London borough of Ealing has updated its logo.
It used to be this tree with a black stripe, and had been since the 1990s.
The most recent tweak had been the addition of the council's web address.
That would have looked really cutting edge in 2002.
It looks less cutting-edge now.
• The council no longer had a licence to use the font.
• The font was not deemed to be fully accessible.
• The shade of green also failed accessibility tests.
• The shade of green did not match the council's new corporate green unveiled last year.
The usual grumble at this point is that updating a municipal logo is an unnecessary waste of money.
The task was thus delegated to the council’s design team because they're already paid for.
Obviously the usual grumblers grumbled anyway.
Several potential logos were produced.
The shortlisted designs were tested by an external accessibility panel.
Other local government design experts took a look.
A final option was selected and developed.
And eventually the council's cabinet said yes.
Here's what they agreed to.
What do you think it represents?
It's a tree, if you weren't certain.
The tree is a link to the former logo, which itself is a reference to the oak tree on the borough's coat of arms.
In developerspeak it "reflects the previous council brand".
The tree is formed of seven curves and there's a reason for that.
The seven towns that make up Ealing are Acton, Ealing, Greenford, Hanwell, Northolt, Perivale and Southall.
They have very different populations, and the curves are all different lengths.
But as well as a tree you're also supposed to see something else, a fingerprint.
It's a brave move to think that people will see a fingerprint and think human diversity.
A lot of grumblers have instead seen police, crime and the surveillance state.
A lot of London boroughs are named after one town rather than the broader extent.
Harrow's another, ditto Barnet, Croydon, Wandsworth, Enfield, Hackney and Camden.
This is an attempt by the borough to say 'hey we're not just Ealing', and I bet hardly any residents notice.
The grumblers' biggest grumble is that the changeover will be unnecessarily expensive.
The council are thus only introducing it as and when necessary, also online.
It doesn't cost to replace the logo on websites and digital products so the fingerprint tree is there already.
But they're not ripping out street signs, repainting bin lorries or replacing all the boards in parks.
They'll only get the new logo when they need to be replaced, i.e. no additional costs will be incurred.
Merton and Harrow took a similar approach when they updated their logos in 2023.
Out and about in Merton you generally only see the new logo on posters and banners, not street furniture.
In Harrow a scattering of replacement streetsigns have the posh new logo, but not many yet.
Harrow did splurge out on big new purple signs at entrances to the borough, but that's about it.
I did however find the new Ealing logo in place in the one place you might expect, on Ealing Broadway outside the town hall.
The council offices have two slabby signs out front, so new that the display space is still empty.
Both have the fingerprint tree up top, also the words London Borough of Ealing in the two official fonts, Nunito regular and Montserrat extra bold.
Any passing shopper might notice and wonder what the strange splodge is.
They might also spot the previous logo immediately behind on a poster about cost of living support, because that hasn't changed.
It's going to be a long time before this new logo is everywhere, or even in quite a lot of places.
The old logo will linger on thousands of bins and hundreds of streetsigns across the borough for decades.
But keep your eyes open and you might spot it soon, or eventually, and maybe not even grumble.
» Reminds me of the Spotify logo.
» The Old Logo Was So Much Better.
» This is just corpo reductive.
» And what did that cost us?
» You have felled a great oak.
» It’s giving shigella in a petri dish.
» How is this a priority right now????
» How can some squiggles in the vague, possible shape of a tree be more accessible than, er, an actual tree???
» Literally looks like a fingerprint. Just awful.
» Passes the "doesn't look like a bum hole" test. So props for that.
» Anything but filling in the potholes.
» That's it, I'm moving to Hounslow.
