City should start over | IN OUR OPINION

Published 9:50 am Sunday, July 5, 2015

Tell us what you want.

That was the message from Bainbridge Island City Hall after its out-of-state consultants revealed their spectacularly inept first attempt at creating a new Bainbridge Island logo.

City officials have been besieged by criticism after the laughable logo was presented to the community a few weeks ago.

Arnett Muldrow & Associates, the city’s consultants from South Carolina, were hired for more than $22,000 to create a new logo for the city and a “branding” package to buff up Bainbridge Island’s appeal to off-islanders.

The loser logo — a shield topped with a row of three medieval-style battle axes floating above wavy blue lines — was roundly criticized by islanders as “cheesy, absurd and offensive,” “out of touch” and “thrown together.”

City officials quickly said the axes would be axed, and they called out for more comments and suggestions from islanders.

“Tell us what you want,” was the message.

Given all that city officials have said about the uproar, however, it seems clear to us that the city isn’t listening to everything that islanders have to say. And they don’t intend to.

Islanders upset about the first logo, and the whole branding effort, submitted a petition this week with more than 500 signatures, and asked city officials to dump the consultants from the other side of the country and start over.

The island’s vast reservoir of creative talent should be tapped instead, they said.

In response, the city has discounted the suggestion to start anew with people who actually know a thing or two about Bainbridge. Some of those who have criticized the branding efforts, city officials have said, haven’t been a part of the whole branding process and lack a complete understanding of the progress that has been made.

Hogwash, we say. You don’t need to work at a dairy to know when the milk’s gone sour.

And the response that the city shouldn’t hire islanders for the effort because it needed an outsider’s view of what would appeal to those across the water? Well, that belief is as goofy as the battle axe logo.

Islanders are well aware of what makes Bainbridge so special. It permeates our collective DNA.

For a place that touts “shop local,” getting locals to create our logo and brand seems like the proper, and sole, place to start.

Dump the consultants and start over.