Bercow’s £50,000 logo clanger
FOR a reported £50,000 fee, this redesign of the famous portcullis logo for the Houses of Parliament seems somewhat underwhelming.
Speaker John Bercow hired consultants – at taxpayers’s expense – to make the emblem less ‘confusing and inconsistent’.
But the update appears to have been limited to removing some dots and replacing the words Houses of Parliament with UK Parliament where they appear.
Parliamentary officials said previous versions of the portcullis, which has been associated with Westminster for 500 years, were being consolidated into one.
A spokesman added: ‘ The visual identity of the UK Parliament has been reviewed and updated by the administrations of both Houses because the current version does not work successfully on digital channels.’
The cost of the rebrand, by consultancy SomeOne, was £50,000, according to The Sunday Times. The portcullis was the badge of Henry VII and his son Henry VIII.