I gather some councillors reached out to their constituents about the new city logo that was adopted Monday night and found most of them didn’t like it.

I think council as a whole should have conducted a survey. I think it would have found out that it didn’t have a winner on its hands.

But then it undoubtedly found that out by the reception the logo got when it was rolled out on May 17, pretty well nothing nice being said about it in community discussion forums on local news websites.

I haven’t spoken with anyone who likes the logo.

FutureSSM was quoted in The Sault Star as saying the new brand is designed to attract and excite youth to Sault Ste. Marie.

The broad colour scheme is designed to mark the city’s heritage and future.

The circle represents the First Nations medicine wheel, the blue the Great Lakes, the green the foothills and the orange and red the beautiful fall foliage.

The circle apparently also represents no beginning and no ending. It is also designed to represent “a signal of connection.”

Ward 2 Coun. Luke Dufour said it’s the stories that make people understand the logo.

Personally I think that any thought of this logo telling stories is a reach.

And as was mentioned in one of the comment sections, a lot of text accompanying the logo will be required for anyone to understand what it represents.

And how is anyone going to find out about the stories? Is someone going to go door-to-door to tell them.

Actually, I think one pertinent explanation of what the logo could represent was missed.

We have a lot of Italian restaurants in the city and they are of such quality that the city is known for them.

To me the new logo looks very much like a pizza, which means it should fit right in.

I am surprised FutureSSM didn’t pick up on that.

It would be far easier to explain that than what is going to be required for what it says the new logo represents.

I probably am not one who should comment on logos because I am not really big on them. Nike’s is probably one of the few with which I am familiar.

But if I had my druthers in this case, I would have stuck with the one we had.

Although I never really got the “Naturally Gifted” motto, the logo itself at least looked pleasing to the eye.

I don’t see that in the new one which more resembles a pizza or maybe a round Rubik’s Cube.

It is hard to believe it took two years to develop the new logo and that it had a budget of $100,000, of which I gather only a portion was spent.

Whatever it was, it would seem to be too much.

I think the best way to have come up with a new logo, if indeed a new one was even required, would have been to have held a contest with a prize of $5,000 or $10,000 or something in between.

In regard to FutureSSM’s claim that the new logo is designed to excite and attract youth to the city, somehow I don’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling that this cut-up circle is going to excite anyone. The most I can see it doing is prompting the question, “What is it”

Craig Huckerby, writing on saultonline, presented a new logo design by Matt Farrell, a 20-year-old graphic designer who came up with it in 15 minutes after watching council Tuesday night.

It blends the new with the old and was a favourite of those commenting on the various news sites and Facebook.

“The biggest obstacle with the new graphic is the long term brand recognition,” Farrell told Huckerby. “The proposed logo has no elements differentiating Sault Ontario from Sault Michigan and viewers have a hard time understanding the elements without reading the brand project summary.

”If FutureSSM sees the new logo as a way to attract visitors from out of town, the logo should immediately be clear.”

Of course, it isn’t, a point not lost on Ward 4 Coun. Marchy Bruni.

“I don’t see it,” he said during the council session.

“Tourists won’t know the story about the city. A logo should speak for itself and this one does not.”

I suppose the reason I have not put much importance in logos in regard to a city is because of the futility I have seen in putting together a mission statement.

About 15 of us participated in one of those sessions when in another life I was editor of The Sault Star.

With a person from Southam head office parachuted in to lead the discussions, which took place over two days at Salzburger Hof Resort at Batchawana Bay, we finally came up with something that anyone with an ounce of sense could have put together in 15 minutes.

This was after we had gone over the same ploughed ground for two days in a futile attempt to reinvent the wheel.

Does anybody really care about logos or mission statements? I think not.

What people care about is those who are representing us getting the job done.

We now have to put the logo affair behind us and hope our councillors will do just that.