Chiswickite - formerly The Croydonian

From today's Hansard:

Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what methodology was used to reach the decision to refresh his Department's logo in April 2006; which (a) Ministers and (b) officials were involved in that process; and what steps have been taken to monitor the effectiveness of the refreshment.

Mr. Sutcliffe: The Department decided there was a need for a brand refresh as non-specialist audiences did not recognise our logo and it did not clearly communicate our role. Creative solutions were required to address issues around brand recognition, explaining the responsibilities of the department, and to ensure visual consistency across all applications....
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what expenditure his Department incurred in refreshing its logo in April 2006.
Mr. Sutcliffe: The costs were as follows:

Initial design concepts: £3,055

Identity design development: £10,460

Identity guidelines: £10,800

Total: £24,315.

Mr. Sanders:To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how his Department assesses value for money achieved in the consistency and distinctiveness of its communications.
Mr. Sutcliffe: Value for money is achieved by using consistent design templates wherever possible, for communications material based on the DCMS brand guidelines in order to reduce design costs.
Due to limited budgets, the Department does not have resources for any wider evaluation.

Right.  Here is the old logo:

 
I retrieved this via the good offices of the internet archive and the wayback machine - this being atop the DCMS's page on 1/1/2006.  

And today, Culture.gov.uk looks like this:

I am uncertain as to whether that skin crawler of a mission statement (As opposed to all of those non-skin crawler mission statements...) should be read as part of the logo.  Amazing they resisted the temptation to add 'and to boldly go where no man has gone before', frankly.  I have looked at 2007 and 2008, and that guff appears with the logo on some front pages, but not all.

Fans of the more heraldic approach might prefer the original:

Does what it says on the tin, doesn't it?

Labels: logos, The arts, Where your money goes

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