DINZ is a joke.

Good on the guy, i looks pretty simple.

Its not bad, but its not great either, congrats to the old timer!

The enclosed version (top right) has real compositional merit, scrap the other 2 and go on from there.

Ditch the helveticesque Auckland City that has been tacked on the bottom without due typographical consideration.

Completely rethink the colour scheme. It’s not contemporary or representative of Auckland. Looks someone picked the pallete council would be most likely to approve and retroed it up a notch. Shouldn’t the dominant colour for this region be a rich blue? That goes back to pre-european days doesn’t it?

It’s good work but, congrats on winning the comp old timer!

It certainly doesn’t say anything about a super city, the significance of it and the excitement that should be felt about a historic development. There is no sense of progress, passion or enthusiasm. It would look good on a fondue set, set in stained glass, or perhaps on the back of a gee in the karate kid movie.

The logo competition raises a bigger question about why in the first place professionals were ignored. After a range of publicly critcised examples (Telecom, Auckland City Council etc) why is it that ATA thought a competition would be suffice instead of employing an agency?

The old responses of “it looks like a kid done that” or “I could have made that in the toilet” has been aimed at the art world for years. Now it seems common ammunition against the design fraternity. Why is it organisations that have usually profited from utilising agencies started to listen to those sentiments?

The big conversation here is about the perceived value of graphic design in the eye of the public and the inability so far of designers to respond adequately as to why they are worth the investment.

Lastly the debate on the ad show was a missed opportuniy, the loudest mouth took over and what do you know – he was the one least qualified talk about it. Sheeze, Frizzell even managed to plug his posters were for sale! Talk about creating opportunities.

thanks @endemicworld

“But it must be noted that Mr Dean will now work with professional designers to develop finished artwork”
- perfect, that could resolve any of my doubts. A great start, well done Jim.

This is, from an execution standpoint, what we hoped for. It’s not a childish scrawl or cut and paste naivety. Instead it is linear, retro-modern, and vectoresque; we can imagine it as being the result of a real design process. Congratulations Jim.

Plus this is really like a first concept presentation so there’s still room to evolve. I gotta say I like it and feel its a solid start. But then I wasn’t clouded by resentment of the notion of a public competition in the first place. There’s as much, if not more, that can be picked apart on a plethora of professionally designed logos on our fair shores. (The DINZ logo is a case in point). I’m excited to see how things proceed and feel that Jim deserves his day in the sun (though Auckland City could surely do with some rain!)

It’s far removed from the Melbourne and Manchester identities, but the culture and aesthetic of Auckland is far removed from those cities. It reminds me of Japanese Municipality flags in the New Zealand visual vocabulary.

Also: beer coasters at Party Central.

Seriously. Go all the way with it.

I can not stop seeing the angry man face. I wonder if international tourists can see the flower?

In black, it’s a little like multiple nodes of transport coming together near the water, flanked in transit by a pair of coffee beans.

… ok so I could have liked it, it feels like its a first draft, not a finished logo.