City of Everett’s New Logo Still Not Ready For Prime Time

We’ve been following the creation of a new logo for the City of Everett ever since the city announced a contest last August where it was offering a $5000.00 prize for the best publicly submitted logo. More than 800 designs were submitted from around the world. On December 3rd, the city announced the new logo and that Seattle artist Sean Hamilton was the winner. On December 9th, we reported that the winning design was very similar to the logo of Envestnet, an investment firm. The city then decided to look into the matter and has been working to a resolution. Since December, we’ve checked with Everett City Public Information Director Meghan Pembroke via e-mail plus occasionally asking Everett CFO Debra Bryant at Wednesday night City Council meetings about the process. Both advised MyEverettNews.com that the city was working on the logo and waiting on communication with Envestnet. At Wednesday’s Everett City Council meeting council member Brenda Stonecipher asked about the logo and was advised by Debra Bryant that the logo has been changed a bit and is in the final stages of approval. MyEverettNews.com reached out to Meghan Pembroke asking for an update and copies of the materials the logo review committee was looking at and received the following reply by e-mail this morning.

Hi Lee – The update Debra provided is mostly correct, and I’ve included a few clarifications below.

As I think Debra mentioned on Wednesday, there is no legal issue with the logo that was selected as the winning design in the competition. While there may be similarities between the two logos, there is no trademark or copyright infringement because there is no likelihood of confusion for the public — the City is a municipality and Envestnet is an investment firm. As Debra said, we have moved forward with the logo that was selected during the initial process and we worked with the winning designer to make minor modifications. He has received the $5,000 award. The revised logo has been approved by the advisory committee and we are now completing our internal approval process; we won’t be releasing the artwork until we’ve completed that process.

When all is said and done it will be interesting to know between the management of the public contest, additional work after so many submissions, survey management, cost of staff time, payments to a graphic arts consultant and any legal fees, what the total cost will be of the new logo. While it may be public records “Sunshine Week” we’re still in the dark when it comes to the new logo for the City of Everett.