A Quick Take On Ontario's Brand Identity
In the last few weeks, Doug Ford and his team unveiled a new slogan, license plate, logo, and driver's license for Ontario. Whether you like his policies or not, Doug Ford is on a quest for change. As a branding studio, we believe that branding should always be proactive. There is an overarching feeling that Ontario is on the cusp of its next big step, this is the right time to rebrand. Our team took some time to talk about these changes Doug Ford is implementing and the direction we would have gone in.
I’ll be the first to say that I actually don’t mind any of the new revisions. I think “A Place To Grow” is a great slogan, the one we had in mind was “A Place To Belong.” A Place To Belong reflects the culture and spirit of Ontario’s past, and future. It taps into our history of diversity, and inclusion. Ontario became a safe haven for immigrants, and refugees throughout the history of Canada, allowing it to become the most multicultural province, and Toronto, the most multicultural city in the world. When looking into our future, A Place To Belong speaks to the promise of opportunity. Toronto has the largest tech hub in Canada, and also has the biggest entertainment industry. Ontario is showing Canada, and the world, that it is a place to do business, get a job, make a movie, or even become Prime Minister. We believe that the diversity of Ontario is embraced and celebrated. Across Ontario, you can find your tribe. When it came out a couple days later that the slogan was A Place To Grow, we were pleasantly surprised. We believe this captures a similar sentiment and is a nice nod to the farming communities across the province.
While we were chatting through what we would do with the icon and slogan, the license plate design was released. Here are a couple of the quick concepts that we were exploring before the announcement:
In terms of the logo, the original trillium that was used in ’64, then updated slightly in ’72, ’94, and in ’02 is our favourite. The fact that they chose to revert back to this logo would have been our first suggestion. That being said, before they actually announced it, we started some designs that we thought could have replaced the “3 men in a hot tub.” The Trillium logo that we workshopped was a play on the new and the old. Just like the slogan, we wanted to take the best of both worlds and make them feel modern.
The second design we were thinking about was the crown. The crown represents royalty, history, and tradition. When we think of Ontario, we think about our government, our nation's capital, and all the historical moments that took place in it. Not only that, but the crown can also signify success, wealth, and power. Like we mentioned before, we’re also seeing an influx of jobs, business, and start-ups. The Canadian tech scene, entertainment industry, as well as the majority of universities can be found in Ontario. We felt an update on the crown used on the license plate could replace the old trillium logo.
The last logo we explored was a play on the word Ontario. Ontario has become the forefront province for developing the arts and culture of Canada. We wanted to design a logo that was more playful to the creative side and where we see the province going for the decades to come.
Again, this was just our interpretation. If we had a chance to sit down with Doug Ford and his camp, run through our in-depth brand workshop, we would probably have a different outcome.
Matt