MEMO governments and corporations: If you're thinking of changing your logo, be very, very careful.

The South Australian government launched its new logo with great ceremony in Adelaide overnight, with Premier Jay Weatherill trumpeting the new design as "bold statement about our place in Australia and our place in the world".

But the logo, featuring a bright red map of Australia with doorways at its centre, has been lampooned on social media, described as "a folded milk carton", a "Monopoly hotel", "hideously disappointing" and "conservative and boring".

"Too often people are unaware of where South Australia is," Mr Weatherill said at the launch. Well, today at least, they know where SA is. It's in a red geometric thingamy that no-one much likes.

Marketing expert Bill Proud, from the Queensland University of Technology's Business School, labelled the logo "childish".

"I don't like it at all," said Mr Proud, who has had 40 years experience in marketing and brand management, and now heads up studies in marketing at the Brisbane-based university.

"It doesn't show the state as a 21st century entity or trying to progress.

"The door looks daunting - like a dark tunnel ... and I'm not sure I want to in there."

SA's logo joins a long list of designs that have been met with derision, ridicule and loathing by the public.

When then-Queensland Premier Peter Beattie launched a redesigned state logo in 2000, it was greeted by a mixture of mirth and incredulity.

The design was variously described as strips of hamburger with fries, four worms eating a jaffa, and even - children look away now - sperm on a burnt tomato.

Launched when Mr Beattie tried to rebrand Queensland as the "smart state", current premier Campbell Newman ditched the logo in 2012.

"Beattie tried to lift Queensland up (with the Smart State)," said Mr Proud. "But the reaction was 'what a load of c***, this is Queensland."

London's Olympic Games organisers copped a barrage of abuse and criticism with its imagefor the 2012 Games, which reportedly cost $800,000.

Within hours of its launch in 2007, 30,000 Britons signed a petition calling for it to be scrapped.

Iran threatened a boycott because its government said the logo resembled the word "zion" while The Sun newspaper even claimed the design caused epileptic seizures.

The NSW government of Nathan Rees commissioned a redesign of that state's iconic waratah image in 2009.

The result, at the time, was described as a lotus.

Melbourne's city council re-did it's logo the same year and was slammed for spending $240,000 on "designing a big "M" logo that looks like shards of glass".



Mr Proud said governments rebranded themselves with new designs to modernise their image.

The danger was that people in general are "comfortable with the old image".

"You have to be very careful," he said. "You have to have very good reason to rebrand."

The Commonwealth Bank changed its logo in 1991. The response, initially, was the same as with nearly every other logo: ridicule and outrage.

Designed by Ken Cato - who also did the new SA logo - it was supposed to represent the five stars of the Southern Cross, but instead was called a "Sao biscuit dipped in Vegemite".

Now, the logo is accepted. Time can be a great healer.

"Logos are vital to a company's image and the best ones become part of the landscape," said Mr Proud, citing Nike's swoosh, Apple and Coca-Cola as some of the best examples.

He said governments were different. Their branding exercsies were not pitched so much at the public, but at other governments.

"Change is about showing renewal and giving reassurance," he said.

The jury may still be out on SA's attempts.



Originally published as Logo no-go: Why brand new is bad news