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Downtown Grand Rapids Branding Campaign

GR_Urbanist

By GR_Urbanist
in Grand Rapids

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jas49503 Hamlet

jas49503

Posted
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I don't see what the problem is with the olive. it makes about as much sense as just about any other brand symbol. It also has a kind of hip, lounge feel to it. nothing that really makes me want to go out, but then again, I doubt that there is a symbol out there that has that effect. If I were them though I would spend a dime or another minute more trying to come up with another symbol because the olive is just fine and I doubt that they could do better.

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jas49503 Hamlet

jas49503

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The brand should be Downtown Grand Rapids, not a Psycho Olive. What are they trying to sell, an olive or downtown?

the brand symbol only sometimes looks like what is trying to be sold. to be honest, I'm not sure why people even care because the symbold has very little to do with the success of the product. If chevy used a different symbol than the bow-tie would you buy (or not buy). It is the marketing campaign as a whole and the quality of the product itself that determine the success. Since nothing is free, I don't see how spending more money to change the symbol benefits the city in any way. maybe they should have gone with a tiny drawing of downtown from the start so people would see that downtown is what they are pushing instead of the olive section at kroger but now that the symbol has been chosen and things have been produced around it changing it makes no sense.

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witulski Unincorporated Area

witulski

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The olive wouldn't be so bad if the colors used in it had ANYTHING TO DO WHATSOEVER with the colors used elsewhere on the page. It's like a slice of spooky midnight in the middle of a sunny afternoon.

EDIT: Oh, and while I'm at it, change the font. It's not like it's got THAT much identity laced into it, and the font used in the "let's go" portion of the campaign is FAR more effective and recognizable, as far as brand identity goes, than the ripoff of Arial or whatever it is they have in their olive. At LEAST try putting Helvetica in there - that's got a certain timeless big-city urban appeal.

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AlexPKeaton Burg

AlexPKeaton

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Does anybody besides us associate that psychedelic olive with any sort of brand? Branding is usually more than just a random image. Often it conveys a certain feeling or message. The olive looks like somebody puked on my computer screen.

FWIW, I didn't think the "keep it a secret" campaign was all that bad. I at least got what they were trying to say and thought it was rather clever. It just wasn't obvious enough.

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fotoman311 Burg

fotoman311

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Does anybody besides us associate that psychedelic olive with any sort of brand? Branding is usually more than just a random image. Often it conveys a certain feeling or message. The olive looks like somebody puked on my computer screen.

FWIW, I didn't think the "keep it a secret" campaign was all that bad. I at least got what they were trying to say and thought it was rather clever. It just wasn't obvious enough.

Duh! That's because it's a secret! :P

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aowwt Whistle-Stop

aowwt

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Uhm why cant we just use the calder art peice as our symbol. Its something everybody in GR knows about and hey you can ACTUALY see it in person. An Amazing concept. One of the first things I think about as resident talking to others is the calder artwork peice in downtown.

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Veloise City

Veloise

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Uhm why cant we just use the calder art peice as our symbol. Its something everybody in GR knows about and hey you can ACTUALY see it in person. An Amazing concept. One of the first things I think about as resident talking to others is the calder artwork peice in downtown.

Because the Calder is not really DT, in the central business district/DDA sense. (There's a bank within visual range, and that's about it.)

As a reminder, Psycho Olive is supposed to be a representation of Rosa Parks Circle. (Of course.)

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Rizzo City

Rizzo

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Because the Calder is not really DT, in the central business district/DDA sense. (There's a bank within visual range, and that's about it.)

As a reminder, Psycho Olive is supposed to be a representation of Rosa Parks Circle. (Of course.)

Veloise, the Calder is located downtown per the DDA map.

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witulski Unincorporated Area

witulski

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I will also add that I am a HUGE fan of this "let's go. downtown" look. It looks bigtime to me. And once the website bugs are worked out, and they lighten the olive, it'll look great. And the PHOTOGRAPHY is fantastic. I just sat and watched the photo cycle several times. It really makes GR look swanky.

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  • 4 weeks later...
MAU Whistle-Stop

MAU

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Another annoyance of their branding/marketing campaign - they've got signs all around the one parking garage promoting 60 minutes free parking. The image is of a scooter with the text all over the top with signs pointing to the garage. I know they're trying to be all trendy and hip, but the problem with that is they don't allow scooters to park in the garage. It just seems weird to me.

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Veloise City

Veloise

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FYI...

Suzanne's department is headquartered at the building known as "1120" (North Monroe) and it deals with current planning and zoning. (Also there are the graphic artists, where I saw the psycho olive design being worked on back when it was, ah, new and fresh.)

The DDA is in City Hall; Jay Fowler and staff handle DT issues.

If a developer had a proposal related to signage, setbacks, transparency, et al, that would fall in front of the planning commission (and BZA and Historic boards as appropriate).

HTH

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  • 4 years later...
Jippy Whistle-Stop

Jippy

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A bit outside the scope of this project (okay, well outside the scope of this project), but the Downtown Detroit Partnership just released its 3-year strategic plan for downtown.  An impressive amount of rapid improvements -- all funded. There are quite of few elements that may be great considerations for downtown GR.

 

 

 
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GRDadof3 Ecumenopolis

GRDadof3

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A bit outside the scope of this project (okay, well outside the scope of this project), but the Downtown Detroit Partnership just released its 3-year strategic plan for downtown.  An impressive amount of rapid improvements -- all funded. There are quite of few elements that may be great considerations for downtown GR.

 

 

 

 

 

Man, if we only had some wealthy business owners that could put up the funds for something like this. :shades:

 

It seems like they did propose a bunch of placemaking upgrades to downtown GR, and were summarily dissed by the community. Maybe it wasn't bold enough and/or didn't reactivate the river enough. Time for a redraw?

 

http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.php/topic/49249-urban-interventions/?hl=%2Bjeff+%2Bspeck#entry1054289

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