3 designs, 1 choice: Behind Maricopa’s new logo
Officials say the wait, price tag were worth it
“That orange saguaro is a beacon to help people find the services and support they need from the government, which is, to me, what the government’s role is supposed to be.”
County Manager Joy Rich
A bold font. A blue, orange and white color scheme. And a stylized silhouette of a saguaro where the “i” should be.
After four years, a few delays and $200,000, Maricopa County unveiled its new logo in January. That money covered research and the logo design from start to finish. The county’s many departments and offices quickly picked up the new brand, adding it to websites, employees’ email signatures and county swag.
Immediately, it met some controversy on social media, with some saying the new symbol looked a lot like the county was giving a giant middle finger to anybody and everybody.
Love it or hate it, officials say the wait and the price tag were worth it. They hope the logo will help put the county’s imprint on projects it funds, such as affordable housing initiatives and parks, and unify an organization with wildly diverse responsibilities across its many departments.
“That orange saguaro is a beacon to help people find the services and support they need from the government, which is, to me, what the government’s role is supposed to be,” County Manager Joy Rich said.
And some believe the young, hip logo can revitalize the county’s image.
“Having some Gen Z folks in my family now, brand is even more important to them,” said Supervisor Bill Gates while unveiling the new logo at a January board meeting. “Here in Maricopa County, we have a wonderful seal. It’s a beautiful seal; we’re very proud of it. But it maybe doesn’t scream 2023 to everyone.”
The logo is the most recent in a series of marketing moves that seem aimed at doing just that. In 2018, officials rolled out an advertising campaign aimed at attracting new hires. With similarly bold fonts and bright colors, the posters were plastered on Valley Metro trains and buses, promising high wages, generous benefits and work that served the public good.
“A government job that feels anything but government,” one poster read.
The county has shifted tone on its social media accounts, attempting to get ahead of the spread of election disinformation and sometimes posting snarky responses to politicians that spread it.
“SOCIAL MEDIA BOTS: Your disapproval is duly noted but your upvotes and retweets will not be part of this year’s totals,” the county’s Twitter account posted on Nov. 12, days after the 2022 election. “This is not meant as an affront to your robot overlords, it’s just not allowed for in Arizona law.”
It launched a TikTok account in 2021, which currently has more than 10,000 followers. The account’s most recent clip encourages county residents to “adopt a big boy” from the county’s animal shelters, playing off a viral trend based on a comedy pop song written by R&B singer SZA for an episode of “Saturday Night Live.”
Another, posted in September, advertises the county’s voter registration status portal with the slogan, “When he’s a 10, but hasn’t checked his voter registration status” to the tune of county singer Shania Twain’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much.”
Rich said county officials don’t want to be disrespectful in their postings. But she said getting a little “cheeky” on social media has helped the county give attention to “the facts and the services.” “All this other stuff was out there about, you know, COVID and elections,” she said. “You need to communicate in a vernacular that gets people’s attention. And I think that’s what’s behind that.”
What — and who — is Maricopa County?
The logo didn’t just come together overnight.
County staff began working on it in 2019, according to Communications Director Fields Moseley. They paid for a round of research with HAPI, an advertising and marketing agency, to see what residents thought of Maricopa County and its identity.
Officials found that Maricopa County residents generally liked living in the Valley. But most of them didn’t know a
lot about county government.
“We had nowhere to go but up,” Moseley said. “We didn’t have something we had to defeat in order to win. We had nothing but gains ahead of us. We couldn’t get worse as far as a lack of identity within the community.”
But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and later, the county was plunged into election controversy after the 2020 presidential vote.
Staff didn’t have the capacity to make the logo project a priority — and if even if they had, it all seemed a little illtimed, officials said.
They finally picked up the project again at the start of 2022, Moseley said. By then, they figured it was worth another round of research to see what people were thinking. While people still liked living in Maricopa County, they found some changes in the latest round of results.
People complained more about traffic and a lack of affordable housing, Moseley said, topics that hadn’t come up in 2019. And, people were more aware of the county’s role in running elections and assisting with public health.
“There was a lot more awareness, obviously because of COVID and the 2020 election, that we had some role to play there,” Moseley said. “And it wasn’t all positive, either. The disinformation and, I think, just the volatility of the last two elections has raised negative feelings amongst a certain percentage.”
That research influenced creation of the current logo, which comes a year after officials returned to the project. It is designed to invoke desert scenery and represent a shared identity among county departments and its residents, officials said.
The saguaro cactus is known for having a single, long root that fixes it in the ground, and the use of it in the new brand image aims to remind residents that here, they also can settle down and form deep connections.
A video announcing the logo touts the county as a “blank slate” and “place of possibility” where “our roots go deep” and “no matter what, we stand tall.”
A few departments, such as the Sheriff’s Office and Attorney’s Office, will continue to use the official county seal for legal purposes.
Rich said most other departments have embraced the new brand enthusiastically.
“A number of our elected (officials) are going to choose to use this as their brand, too,” she said. “So I think that they seem to have responded to it as well.”
A look at the logos that didn’t make it
County supervisors got the final say on what the new logo would look like.
Rich and Moseley said they may have “broke a few eggs” throughout the process, acknowledging that the supervisors weren’t impressed by all of their logo proposals, which initially were presented to them in black-andwhite.
Ultimately, the final choice came down to three options: a stylized piece of line art reflecting the sun shining into a valley, a blossoming flower and the saguaro.
Rich said she was happy with the result.
“I’m proud of that brand, and I’m proud of that being a sign to our citizens that we’re here to help you,” she said.
And as for the haters?
“You can’t predict what people are going to see; how they’re going to respond to it,” Rich said. “You know, we knew whatever our logo was, seeing what happened to Gilbert and Glendale and some of them, that there would be controversy no matter what. So we were prepared for that.”