City of Everett’s New Logo On Indefinite Hold

It was one of those things that sounded simple in the beginning but turned out to be much more complicated. Since last August MyEverettNews.com has been following the City of Everett’s attempt to come up with a new logo. It began with a logo contest that offered a $5000.00 first prize. Logo ideas were received from around the world, the public voted and a blue-ribbon panel chose the winning design submitted by Seattle designer Sean Hamilton. After a time it was pointed out that the winning logo looked a lot like the existing logo of a Seattle investment firm. The new logo was put on hold while the City of Everett considered its options. On March 20th we reported that the city paid $5000 to Hamilton but was going to make some minor changes. Here’s an excerpt from that report with a quote from Meghan Pembroke at the City of Everett…

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.

At today’s Everett City Council meeting MyEverettNews.com checked in again with CFO Debra Bryant who advised us that the new logo is on an indefinite hold. She said the project hasn’t been completely abandoned but there are far greater priorities right now. We’ll let you know of any further developments.