I ❤️ NY
This week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and the Partnership for New York City — the nonprofit consortium of private sector executives and firms which promotes economic activity— announced a new campaign to reimagine and revitalize NYC.
Predictably, ongoing local controversy centers on the cardinal sin of replacing the long-beloved, iconic I Love New York logo.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane.
The year is 1977.
NYC recovers from rampant crime and a near-bankruptcy scare.
Ed Koch is elected Gotham’s 105th mayor, the first of his 3 terms.
The Yankees beat the Dodgers to claim their 21st World Series title.
The State Department of Commerce hires the Wells Rich Greene ad agency.
WRG’s founding president, Mary Wells Lawrence, is the first female CEO of a NYSE-listed company.
The late, great Milton Glaser creates the iconic I Love New York logo, his literal love letter to the greatest city in the world.
In the most “only in New York” fashion.
In a taxi on the way to the logo meeting.
Sketching crayon on some scrap paper.
(Glaser also designed original logos for Brooklyn Brewery, DC Comics, and my alna mater, Stony Brook University, and co-founded New York Magazine.)
Glaser’s work is done pro bono. The logo is trademarked and earns Empire State Development millions ($30,000,000+) yearly for the next 45 years.
At its best, “rebranding” any timeless classic is an exercise in vacuous drudgery.
At worst, this week’s campaign press release reads as a self-congratulatory, tone-deaf victory lap for the plutocratic Partnership for New York City.¹
Suddenly, a half-century of brand capital: erased, negated, zeroed — like so many Credit Suisse contingent convertible bonds.
This is the way things go, we are told.
Bodegas beget Blue Bottles.
American Typewriter begets MTA Helvetica.
Hand-drawn hearts beget sterile emoji —
the dreaded stuff of deleted Canva drafts.
But there aches something else.
Countless New Yorkers cherish the celebrated mark with the most solemn meaning: 9/11.
Glaser modified his work to eulogize the fallen and uplift the city — and indeed, the entire nation.
At the heart’s apex, there is a slight blackened portion, representing the Twin Towers’ location on the beating heart of the city, Manhattan Island.
Unlike every Times Square billboard.
It doesn’t clamor for consideration.
It doesn’t insult your attention.
It is a silent vigil, an elegy eternal.
Like everything worth anything in this city.
Blink and you’ll miss it. Gone in a New York minute.
Maybe this campaign, spectacularly despite itself, succeeds.
Echoing Governor Kathy Hochul — herself another first female CEO, of the Empire State — “encouraging New Yorkers of every background to come together”…
…to reject this fever dream, and insist — nay, demand! — some things, in fact, need not change, the last non-gentrified hill for patriots to die upon.
In the wise words of the poet who once said:
“I can’t live the buttoned-down life like you. I want it all! The terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles! Sure, I might offend a few of the *blue* noses with my cocky stride and musky odors. Oh! I’ll never be the darling of the so-called ‘City Fathers’ who cluck their tongues, stroke their beards, and talk about “What’s to be done with this Homer Simpson?’” (“Lisa’s Rival”, The Simpsons, 1994)
¹The Partnership for New York City is the spiritual and legal successor of the New York City Partnership’s 2002 merger with the colonial-era, mercantilist New York Chamber of Commerce, founded in 1768.
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