Calls for Glasgow Commonwealth Games to be given a discount on 'seen-it-before' logo

Published on Wednesday 10 March 2010 21:58

THERE were calls last night for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games organisers to get a discount on their new £95,000 logo after The Scotsman revealed that the company behind it had designed a similar image three years earlier.

• Picture: PA

Former Glasgow provost Michael Kelly claimed that some of the cost of the brand, paid to city design firm Marque, could be returned after claims that the logo was "second hand".

The firm produced a logo for the Games that was similar to their design three years earlier for the Glasgow arts venue the Common Guild.

Both logos feature a letter G surrounded by concentric circles, and have been described as "virtually identical" by experts.

Mr Kelly, the man behind Glasgow's highly successful Glasgow's Miles Better campaign, said: "The point of the logo is to promote the Games and Glasgow throughout the Commonwealth.

"This other logo is not known outside Scotland so won't do any harm. But in these deeply recessionary times Glasgow could go back to the design company and negotiate a discount."

Criticism continued to grow last night that the money spent by Games organisers on their new branding did not come up with a more original image.

Design expert Neil Baxter, secretary of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, said he was disappointed a more original design had not been produced.

He said: "It's colourful, it's lively but it's derivative. The skill of the designer is to come up with an innovative and original design to fit the brief, and that should not be 'one we made earlier'."

He added: "It does look remarkably similar. I do feel that, while people may have a house style, you should really be avoiding something that is similar to one you did some time ago. It should be something fresh and appropriate.

"It's disappointing and I would expect a top-quality organisation to come up with something a little more original."

Another expert, Andy Glidden, who has played a key role in brand design for global firms such as the airline Cathay Pacific, said he would not have submitted a design so similar to earlier work.

The Edinburgh-based designer said: "I want to be clear that I think the 95,000 spent on branding for the Commonwealth Games is money well spent. Creating a logo and all the branding that goes along with it is an involved creative process.

"But if I had been involved I would not have submitted a design that was so similar to an earlier work.

At some point, the agency should have said, hang on, it is very similar to something we've already done. Somebody is surely going to pass comment."

The Commonwealth Games design was unveiled at Glasgow's Clyde Auditorium this week.

The team that chose the logo included Paul Stickley, the head of visual communication at the Glasgow School of Art, Commonwealth and Olympic athlete Shirley Webb and two directors from the Glasgow 2014 Organising Committee.