The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gwinnett adopts logo, slogan, seal
‘Vibrantly Connected’; New branding comes ahead of bicentennial.
Gwinnett County has officially adopted a new logo, slogan and seal — regardless of what the haters have to say about it.
The county commission voted Tuesday afternoon to adopt the new branding that architecture and design firm Perkins+Will first presented to officials (and to the public, via media reports) last month. The logo is a circle with colorful, “kaleidoscopic” shapes overlapping inside, and the seal is that same shape with the words “Gwinnett County,” “Georgia” and “Established 1818” wrapped around it.
The adopted slogan, a favorite target in recent weeks for online commenters, is “Vibrantly Connected.”
The new branding — the design of which cost the county about $123,000 — comes as Gwinnett is preparing for its bicentennial celebration and is aimed at better representing the community the county has become. It also
will serve an important role in economic development efforts, officials said, giving recruiters a more modern emblem — and message — to work with.
Gwinnett communications director Joe Sorenson called the project “a rare opportunity to make a statement about who you are and what you want to be.”
County officials first tasked Sorenson with exploring new branding in July of 2016. The county seal, which also acted as the de facto government logo, was created in 1988, when Gwinnett had roughly a third of its current population as was almost exclusively white. The county now has more than 900,000 residents — more than half of which are black, Latino or Asian.
The old seal also featured cotton bales and a bland attempt at depicting the Declaration of Independence, which was signed by county namesake Button Gwinnett.
The county has never had an official slogan before.
“This final, colorful brand symbolically reflects the desired image of our County [as] a manifestation of the American dream in a business-friendly environment catering to our unique blend of an international community of various ages, education levels, professional skills and life perspectives,” the lengthy resolution adopted Tuesday said, in part.
While county officials have expressed support from the get-go, many Gwinnett residents weren’t fans of the new branding (if online comment sections are any indication).
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s first article on the new designs garnered hundreds of comments. Most were negative, calling the logo too corporate or reminiscent of the Google Chrome icon.
They also mocked the “Vibrantly Connected” slogan, with many detractors arguing that the cursive font it was written in in initial designs was hard to read and looked more like “Violently Corrected.”
The slogan became official Tuesday, but Sorenson said the much-debated font was not an official part of the resolution voted on by commissioners.