Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson was on the defensive Wednesday afternoon when asked about his change of heart on a newly designed city logo, which has now been put on hold.

"You guys. Seriously? This is the most absurd line of questioning, I think, I've ever heard in eight years as mayor," Robertson told reporters after speaking about housing at a luncheon hosted by the Urban Land Institute.

The city paid $8,000 for a new logo.

Last week, councillors approved the new logo in a 7-2 council vote with no previous public consultation.

Almost immediately, the local graphic-design community expressed anger, describing the logo as poorly designed and unoriginal.

On Tuesday, Robertson issued a statement saying the logo had been put on hold.

Attention 'bizarre,' says mayor

City staff, he said, had been instructed to "not put the wordmark on any permanent city assets" until there is public consultation.

"It's incredibly bizarre all this attention on the logo," said Robertson when asked why there wasn't public consultation before the logo was approved by council.

"We're elected to make decisions like that."

At the start of his speech to the Urban Land Institute, Robertson was light-hearted about the logo fiasco.

The new City of Vancouver logo, shown at the top, was commissioned to replace the former logo, shown on the bottom. (City of Vancouver)

"I want to focus my remarks on the one issue that I know we're very focused on and that's the city's logo," he said.

After a pause and some laughter, Robertson said, "just kidding."

Later he told reporters, "we're going to take another look at it."

"We're going to do some more consultation and I think that will be a good step to make the changes that we need."

Robertson ended the media session with a plea for reporters to focus on the drug overdose crisis and homelessness in the city and walked away.