Posted on 08/19/2014 1:36:54 PM PDT by longtermmemmory
The World Trade Center Has A New, Very Confusing Logo
Cramming in a mind-melting series of visual allusions, the $3 million WTC logo is also an ad.
The World Trade Center has a new logo. Part of a $3.57 million branding endeavor, it's a riff on space and negative space, presence, and absence. It’s like a Rubin vase test, playing tricks on the eye and asking viewers to see what they want to see. Which would almost be poetic if not for the fact that it could also be read as an ad for a luxury shopping mall.
To be fair, Landor Associates, the firm that designed the logo, had the difficult task of branding something that's almost impossible to brand; there are too many conflicting ideas about what the World Trade Center site is, and should be. The logo reflects as much. As the New York Times reports, each of the five bars stands for the five towers in what will be the entire 16-acre World Trade Center complex when it’s complete. The slant of the top half of the logo is at a precise 17.76-degree angle, a hat tip to 1 World Trade Center’s 1,776-foot height
As for the Twin Towers, their shadows are visible in the logo if you look closely enough. The two empty columns in the top half refer to the Tribute in Light, a heartwrenching memorial to the fallen towers that got under way in 2002. Below them, the two white columns allude to the twin pools of the National September 11 Memorial.
The whole thing is also a W which stands for “World Trade Center” as well as the "Westfield World Trade Center," a luxury shopping center that opens next year. (To my eyes, it also bears an uncanny resemblance to the old Wired magazine W.)
According to the New York Times, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the public agency that owns the World Trade Center site, awarded Landor a $3.57 million contract for the job last year.
The logo manages to squeeze in so many references, juggling a landmark, a Twin Tower tribute, and an ad in one, that it feels like it's pandering. But given the wildly competing interests that have informed the redevelopment of the site, this logo just might be the perfect embodiment of a space still in search of its identity.
Black Power!
Three point five mill for that? Five rectangles?
I see the ‘W’ and the ‘T’ but not the ‘C’.
The old twin towers are below sea level. Wonderful. /s
I’m surprised that it didn’t incorporate a star and crescent somewhere within it.
More over-the-hill elitist stupidity.
Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!
Hands up! Don’t Shoot!
Somebody laughed all the way to the bank.
i see a skull that reminds me we are all doomed.
the c comes in the fact that the w and t are centered on each other..
wt center...
Good one!
A WT ?
For example: What is this? This looks like a sewer. I use to work in Greenpoint Brooklyn near a sewer treatment plant that looked exactly like this. Why not build a fountain??
And just why is there a minaret on top of the giant trophy to Al-Qaeda, I mean the "Freedom tower"?
And of course, now this.....
3 million dollars? for that?
the T....is only suggested in the actual logo..
Id say they paid a lot and got very little for their money
its very cutting edge.....for junk...
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