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In 2025, Bloomington paid CivicBrand $95,000 to develop a brand for the city, and it's safe to say there has been some backlash — and some comparing to backsides.
Among beautiful color schemes, classic apparel ideas and a skateboard wrapped in B’s, the point of conflict lies within the big reveal of the brand’s main logo. It was worked on for about a year, paid for upfront and created just for the city, and what did it end up being?
...the letter B.
Now, this is disappointing for two reasons.
The first reason is that it feels uninspired, and the second reason is that it doesn’t feel like a city’s logo. Many people point to the price tag as being the obvious “sin,” but in my opinion, the real problem lies in the idea of trying to create a city brand — rather than trying to create a city worth branding. Most cities are not known because their name is beautiful or inspiring; most are known because of what lies within them.
Only relatively few cities enjoy international name recognition, such as Paris, New York and Tokyo, but even that recognition is not enough to avoid disappointment among those who visit. The phenomenon known as Paris Syndrome, a type of severe culture shock that hits tourists after their romantic expectations of a city are dashed away by dirty streets and rude people, shows that building a brand alone cannot make your city the “World's Desire.”
If the large cultural metropolises cannot always meet the expectations set by their own brand, what chance does Bloomington have? In my opinion, this is what was missed when CivicBrand.
That is also why this new logo feels like a company's logo, because it is really only companies that worry about building brand recognition in the first place. Companies play the numbers game with advertising to get people to think of their company whenever possibly relevant. That works great for companies who aren’t focused on making lasting relationships with their customers, but cities are focused on their customers — their citizens — and also their interdependent relationships between one another and the municipality itself. This means cities need to focus on what people say about their city when its name is brought up in conversation.
Cities need to build reputation, of course, but it has to be grown organically and from word of mouth. No amount of advertising can produce a message that will convince a large audience that a city is a good place to live. All advertising can do is amplify the size of the audience who hears that message, regardless of if it’s effective or not.
The City of Bloomington is rightfully trying to focus on what the people of Bloomington think of their own community. CivicBrand did furious surveying and has many pictures in their report of our streets, but the problem is that the presented branding design does not capture what CivicBrand saw in our community. Bloomington has too much character, and too many awesome — if not at least interesting — quirks, to be reduced down to some optimally designed logo built for maximum appeasement and recognition.
However, I do want to be clear that I am not throwing shade at CivicBrand, nor am I trying to express that I think what they provided was not worth the cost. Despite a disappointing logo meant to be the big, main one, the city acquired some great designs for the city departments — where the big B is admittedly only used as an accent piece.
For example, the Twin Lakes Recreation Center is a strong contender for the best logo. The abstraction of the curved lines are reminiscent of both fishing poles and trekking poles — two great activities for a lake — and the simple circle representing the sun lying lazily above the poles reminds us of why we go outside in the first place — because it's fun!
So, while the City of Bloomington may have found a hard wall in just how generic its residents will willingly go, it has now also gotten a clearer picture of what makes Bloomington itself — the people.
Evan Powell is a second-year MPA student at Indiana University’s O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
