Unveiled last Thursday in Marseille, the new logo for the Aix-Marseille Provence Metropole has proved controversial.
‘Le logo fait tomber Maryse Joissains de sa chaise’ announced La Provence. And this is why…
Aix’s mayor is not one to mince her words. She wrote to M. Gaudin expressing her ‘anger’ and ‘indignation’. She complained that the whole exercise had been conducted without consultation of the territories**, and that it had been done en catimini (on the sly according to my dictionary) and in contempt of the town of Aix-en-Provence. She then turns to the logo itself which is where she gets really warmed up. ‘Bad…senseless…meaningless…and finally vulgar’, she wrote. In particular she dislikes the hole in Aix’s <X> which she says is an insult to the town.
( ** M. Gaudin, mayor of Marseille and president of the Metropole, states that she wasn’t at the meeting when the mayors were shown the logo).
My initial reaction to the logo, I have to say, was bewilderment. What was this communicating? Of the four icons along the bottom, I guessed the final 2 – hills and sea – but what on earth were the first 2, and why indeed was there a hole in Aix’s <X>?
So here is the explanation from the agency: ‘On y retrouve des pictogrammes représentants ” le ciel, les espaces de nature, les reliefs, la mer… sans oublier le soleil, qui se glisse comme un clin d’oeil dans la typographie “. Ce dernier est en effet niché dans le X de Aix. Déclinés dans quatre couleurs, bleu et vert pastel, orange et bleu, ces pictogrammes ” évoquent la gamme colorielle caractéristique du territoire “. Sa signature « l’Audace par nature » veut faire écho à ” la nature et au tempérament de ses habitants qui vont de l’avant, innovent et croient en l’avenir “.
The first two icons then represent the sky and areas of natural beauty, and the hole in the <X> of Aix is the sun! The message about the inhabitants was totally lost on me. Creating logos is a very difficult art; it is so tricky to get this sort of communication right…but I have to agree with Aix’s feisty mayor on this.
What do you think?
aixcentric 
The so-called logo is totally “raté” ! It looks like nothing. Practically invisible. Can it be changed?
I think the Madame le Maire d’Aix wants to change it and M. Gaudin said ‘Non’. Let’s see what happens. It communicates nothing to me!
I dont like it. Vraiment moche! Et en plus sans message clair!
D’Acc!
The sky has the look of a cloud covered sky and if they really want to represent a sun, the X with a hole in it should be hello!
Yellow!
Yes yellow would make a bit more sense.
It would be fascinating to know how much the whole exercise cost!