Dublin City Council logo wrong?
- This topic has 21 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 16 years, 10 months ago by Hiivaladan.
-
AuthorPosts
-
-
September 26, 2003 at 1:34 pm #706495AnonymousInactive
Have you noticed that the re-designed current logo for the Dublin City Council has no flames coming out of the turrets? So they have historically changed the meaning forever of Dublin’s own identity. Even the old logo had a representation of the flames coming from the turrents. Why didn’t anyone notice this? It is an essential part of the coat of arms for Dublin. Has been for over 400 years.
I saw a discussion of this yesterday on creativeireland.com
new logo:
http://www.dublincity.ie/inside/images/01_logo.gifold logo:
http://www.sdublincoco.ie/notemplate/recreation/logo_parkslinks/dublincity.gifDublin City coat of arms.
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~donnaweb/coatsofarms/dublin.gif -
September 26, 2003 at 3:02 pm #736194StarchParticipant
I think it’s easy to mistake the flames on top of the old logo as turret battlements ……probably lack of reasearch by tha graphic designers….RTE did this too for the eurovision logo 94..[img][IMG]http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=eurovision+94&sa=N&tab=wi[IMG][/img]
-
September 26, 2003 at 3:26 pm #736195notjimParticipant
isn’t the problem now that the dublin logo is indistinguishable from the leinster logo, but then i guess the problem now is that dublin is indistinguishable from leinster. why the flames by the way?
-
September 26, 2003 at 3:53 pm #736196AnonymousInactive
“The Dublin Coat of Arms was given to Daniel Molyneux of the Dublin corporation, Ulster king-at–arms, Principal Herald of all Ireland in 1607. On the seal are the three castles of Dublin, which have been the sign of the city ever since the middle ages. Each castle has a tower which appears as though it is on fire. The fire symbolizes the citizens’ zeal in defending themselves.”
-
September 26, 2003 at 4:53 pm #736197StarchParticipant
isn’t the problem now that the dublin logo is indistinguishable from the leinster logo
It’s all part of the big plan……Dublin’s sprawling so much…..that one day it will be Leinster.
-
September 26, 2003 at 5:03 pm #736198el architinoParticipant
EL ARCHITINO has had his graphic design firm make up an alternative logo to the pathetic attempt made by dublin city council.
EL ARCHITINO’s design heals wounds during transition between old and new, between passion and apathy.
should anyone wish to purchase a t-shirt with this logo they are available on request from EL ARCHITINO gift shop 43 lower benburbs st.sizes xxs only
-
September 26, 2003 at 5:06 pm #736199JTParticipant
think you maybe confusing the Munster arms and the Lenster arms
-
September 26, 2003 at 5:21 pm #736200GregFParticipant
True tis a Harp that represents Leinster
-
September 26, 2003 at 5:26 pm #736201notjimParticipant
you are right, i don’t know why i thought the leinster flag was three not burning castles. friday evening, gets you every time.
still, why the fire?
el architino is a genuis.
-
September 26, 2003 at 6:09 pm #736202AnonymousInactive
it’s symbolic. As all coat of arms are. Derry has a skeleton on its one. But you’ll see many variations on the dublin council logo on bins and manholes, but they still keep the flame motif in there.
The new one totally wipes it out, esentially wiping out a part of history+dublin culture IMO.
-
September 27, 2003 at 1:10 am #736203GrahamHParticipant
Every lampost in the city has to be changed now…
-
September 27, 2003 at 10:52 am #736204Paul ClerkinKeymaster
Why Graham? Look around at the street furniture – most of it has different versions of the arms depending on what era it is from.
-
September 27, 2003 at 2:54 pm #736205traceParticipant
There’s more to Dublin’s coat of arms than three flaming medieval castles: http://www.stjohns.be/campus/Class/Renaissance/coatarms.htm. But does anyone know why the shield is blue (still Dublin’s colour)?
The Great Seal of Dublin long predates the 1607 coat of arms. For an image of the 13th-century (1229?) seal, see http://www.dublincity.ie/dublin/regalia2.html The seal has two faces: one appears to recall the city’s origins, depicting a Viking (?) boat under sail; the other shows a single castle with three watchtowers. (How did the three towers become the Three Castles of Dublin? Is it just a heraldic device that means the same thing?)
The Mansion House website – http://www.askaboutireland.com/ntn/dublincity/mhheraldry.html – says that the origin of the Dublin Coat of Arms is unknown and the meanings of the symbols on it obscure. The most plausible interpretation I have found – http://www.iol.ie/dublincitylibrary/regalia.htm – says: “The City Seal shows the Three Castles as three watchtowers surrounding one of the gates in the medieval City Wall. Dublin is evidently under siege; from the central watchtower two sentries sound the alarm, while on each flanking watchtower stands an archer, poised with a cross-bow. The scene is symbolic of the readiness of the citizens to defend the city, and it was probably not intended to depict any actual event. With the passage of time, the three watchtowers became three separate castles, each one bearing three battlemented towers, as shown in the Coat-of-Arms. The sentries and archers were replaced by flames leaping from the towers on the castles.”
The city logo is a much-simplified form of the coat of arms and has taken on many guises over the years; a C19 version, used on official stationery, is shown on p113 of Peter Pearson’s ‘The Heart of Dublin’. I quite like the current, spacey-floaty logo, which has echoes of the original city image of three towers (which don’t sprout flames). And the new blue is more like the one worn by the Dubs we love!
Incidentally, there is a city flag. Again, according to the city libraries’ website: “The Dublin City Flag, which was adopted for use in 1885, presents a combination of national and civic emblems, with the harp of the Ireland in gold on a green background and the Three Castles of Dublin quartered in white on a blue background nearest the flagpole. It is flown at city Hall and at the Mansion House to mark events of civic important, and at half mast on the death of a serving or former Lord Mayor or Honorary Freeman of Dublin.”
For images of national, provincial and regional civic coats of arms. see http://homepage.tinet.ie/~donnaweb/regional/ This site contains the surprising observation that Henry VIII granted Ireland the Harp as its coat of arms because he didn’t like the Popish connotations of the three-crowned former national coat of arms, now used by Munster!
-
September 27, 2003 at 3:53 pm #736206traceParticipant
About the new blue in the logo: it seems it’s the designers’ favourite colour – http://www.creativeinc.ie/htmpages/portfolio/dcc.htm – See also their recent work for Aurium and The Irish Greyhound Board: same blue.
-
September 27, 2003 at 8:37 pm #736207AnonymousInactive
I think you will find that all versions of the Dublin identity around the city still contain the motif of the flame with the castles, as this is an intergral part of the Dublin coat of arms. I have seen really ornate ones on the old silver lampost at the top of Clanbrasil street facing christ church. Maybe someone else could take a pic.
here are 2 pics of the council logo still on bins around the city that still contain the motif. I think it is a crying shame that the designers or the council themselves were allowed to blandify the city’s identity and ignore its coat of arms and meaning after 400 years.
-
September 28, 2003 at 7:16 pm #736208traceParticipant
MaxB, the flames may be 400 years old but they are a corruption of the original image on the Great Seal, which is almost 800 years old! No flames back then.
BTW, according to the Office of Chief Herald at the National Library of Ireland – http://www.nli.ie/h_eire.htm – “Triplication of symbols in heraldic art, is merely a convention for the purpose of achieving greater balance on the triangular surface of the shield.” So, as the new city logo design dispenses with the shield, perhaps there should be only one castle, not three? That, too, would be in keeping with the C13 image that started all this.
-
September 29, 2003 at 12:55 pm #736209AnonymousInactive
somehow I don’t think the plan was to go back to a time before Dublin recieved its coat of arms. Unless that’s the excuse they may use.
The fact that it is consistent through all the previous manifestations of the council logo show I think that It was seen as important to maintain this.
The fact is that as it stands right now Dublin’s coat of arms and identity is 3 castle’s and the flame motif on each. That’s just the way it is.
-
September 30, 2003 at 9:21 am #736210Rory WParticipant
As one who has dabbled in brand management in the past – one of the worst things you can do is have variations of your logo – if you are changing your old logo make sure you have the ability to dispose of older versions of your image within a month or so – if not rebranding is a waste of time.
-
September 30, 2003 at 11:29 am #736211kefuParticipant
That wasn’t feasible because the three burning castles is engraved on lamp-posts, bins and so on and couldn’t be removed, not least for historical reasons.
I think the “not-so-new” logo is snazzy enough. When the Corpo changed its name to City Council, they had to do something to update themselves.
I think it’s gone some way towards helping consign stereotypes of workers with arse cleavage and Ireland’s most lazy employees into the past. -
September 30, 2003 at 12:10 pm #736212GrahamHParticipant
I think the sign on the civic offices is funny – the building had just been completed with ‘Dublin Corporation’ carved in massive stone lettering at the entrance – when they went and changed the name.
Now the DUBLIN C of the original remains with ITY COUNCIL spliced in after!
And the Irish had to be changed as well – a neat job though.
You would have though someone would have thought of this considering the massive cost of cut stone – the name change was probably proposed for years -
September 30, 2003 at 2:33 pm #736213d_d_dallasParticipant
Limerick Cork and Galway Corpo’s all got name changes on the same day – and I don’t think any of them managed to deface the facades of their HQ’s quite like DCC.
-
June 27, 2007 at 4:04 pm #736214HiivaladanParticipanttrace wrote:The most plausible interpretation I have found – http://www.iol.ie/dublincitylibrary/regalia.htm – says: “The City Seal shows the Three Castles as three watchtowers surrounding one of the gates in the medieval City Wall. Dublin is evidently under siege]
Ironic! Looks like the defenders failed…the barbarians got inside the gate a long time ago.
-
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.