OK, this is my last post of the day… but has anyone else noticed the new Arts Council funding logos? I only picked up on them in papers from over the weekend:
Ack, a designer’s nightmare. I can see why they might want to specify the funding streams, but the simple square logo was so much more elegant and less obtrusive. Although perhaps that’s the point…
arts management ireland 
its part of their new visibility campaign…quite a clever way to highlight the variety of artforms supported imo but you are right emily – there are a few designers for who this will be a bit of a head ache, i mean web address added to existing logo?? Fair play to their designer that it looks as well as it does
I’ve warmed to them ever so slightly, and the change does make you notice them. I see the logic of the web address, but they just look that much more clunky even if the designer has done his/her best! Curious also that it’s ‘the art of film’ instead of just ‘film’.
First, the Arts Council was dead right to update the shape of its logo – landscape-format logos are able to claim more page space than square logos; in the past the AC logo has been outshone by those of more minor funders.
The AC issued a PDF file with guidelines on how to use the new logo. The designers of the PDF themselves ignored those same guidelines on the cover pages, an action which I completely sympathesise with – a big, odd-shaped black thing is a designer’s nightmare. I agree with the new format, and the raised profile it deservedly gives the AC. However, where the logo is popping up on websites it looks ugly, and some flexibility has to be introduced into its use.
As a designer, I have had to use this new logo a number of times in the last few months. I can understand why the AC would want to attract more attentsion to the logo, but the guidelines on how the logo has to be used are much too restrictive and intrusive. Especially with art and design posters, there has to be some flexibility introduced, so as not to detract from the images and design!