• The Madison Metropolitan School District recently hired Fieldtrip, a design agency that specializes in working with nonprofits, to rebrand the district. The work was completed for the agreed-upon price of $99,880.
But you’re not looking at Fieldtrip’s work. Instead, the district went with a “free” design, shown here, contributed by a private citizen. District officials have declined to identify the contributor but did note that that person in question used Fieldtrip’s research to create the selected logo.
• Gretel’s redesign of the Philadelphia Art Museum’s identity predictably drew ire. Detractors called the new design “too aggressive” and “too corporate,” and some lamented that the previous design, created by Pentagram, was still viable.
An insightful Print article by Amelia Nash examines the new identity. “[T]his isn’t aggression, it’s assertion. A museum that has long stood as a fortress of culture is finally speaking in a tone that can be heard beyond its marble steps.”
The more worrisome aspect of the robust new identity, Nash writes, is the museum board’s firing of the museum CEO Sasha Suda. “The timing is especially awkward: she oversaw the rebrand that launches this new identity, and now she’s gone. The optics are terrible. It raises questions about governance, clarity of mission, and whether the board is really aligned with the brand vision it commissioned. Because a brand is culture, and culture leaks. If leadership churns, the risk is that the brand becomes a graphic veneer rather than a lived truth.”