The new We ♥️ NYC logo is about community
Plus: I'm in love with the new Canadian Space Agency logo
I ♥ New York, you ♥ New York, we all ♥ New York.
The Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit business group, announced its new We ♥ NYC marketing campaign Monday that pays homage to a classic. Where Milton Glaser’s original 1976 I ♥ NY logo is used to market the state to outsiders, We ♥ NYC is community focused, meant to build civic pride and engagement as the city rebuilds post-COVID.
“Let's all come together, no matter if it's volunteering to clean up parks, volunteering at a homeless shelter,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “It's about all contributing together because this is the city we love.”
The heart in the new logo has been emojified, and the mark uses Grotesque Sans, a sans-serif font chosen as a nod to the city’s subway signage, rather than the ITC American Typewriter used in the Glaser-designed logo. Reaction online hasn’t been particularly positive, with some complaining about its clunkiness and others that a well-known logo has been ruined.
Both logos will run simultaneously, which speaks to the power of the original mark. An icon representing an icon, I ♥ NY is no more threatened by an authorized, complimentary We ♥ NYC campaign than it is by a bootleg I ♥ TX shirt sold at a truck stop gas station outside Odessa. Ruin the original? Impossible. Get a grip.
The campaign makes liberal use of emoji, including the heart, Statue of Liberty, and taxi cab. “We ♥…” is used to fill in the blank with New York City classics, like Broadway and pizza, or concepts encouraging New Yorkers to be considerate, like sliding down to the end seat on the subway.
“We ♥ NYC is a campaign to remind all New Yorkers of our greatest strength: each other,” read the campaign’s full-page ad in Monday’s New York Times. “It’s a call to step up and act. By volunteering, creating, or supporting your favorite park, your neighborhood, or a local small business.”
Glaser’s design is owned by the New York State Department of Economic Development, the state’s tourism agency, and the agency approved and owns the new logo as well but will otherwise be uninvolved in the campaign, according to Ad Age.
I'm in love with the new Canadian Space Agency logo
To the moon, eh? Canada expects to become the second nation to travel around the moon next year and when they do, their astronaut will be wearing a new logo.
The Canadian Space Agency debuted a modernized logo last Thursday showing three red stars and a maple leaf, Canada’s national emblem. The rebrand is meant to symbolize Canada entering a new era of space exploration, the agency said, ahead of one of its astronauts joining NASA’s manned Artemis II mission in 2024 to orbit the moon.
“With the return to the moon, an increasing need for Earth observation data, and a growing Canadian space industry, the timing is ideal to give Canada's space program a modern, simplified symbol that is distinctly Canadian and embodies the values of the future-focused space sector,” the agency said in a statement.
The agency’s previous logo has been used since 1996. Unlike NASA, which keeps both its old and new logos around, the CSA — or ASC, for Agence Spatiale Canadienne, for our friends in Quebec — said it will phase out its old logo completely on communication, though the old logo may continue to appear in select situations until the completed changes are implemented.
You can buy official apparel with the new logo here or at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum and Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa.
Trump finally makes his Facebook return
In a Facebook post Friday — his first since Jan. 6, 2021 and first since Meta said it would allow him back onto their platforms this January — former President Donald Trump wrote “I’M BACK” and posted a video of himself saying “sorry to keep you waiting, complicated business” on election night 2016.
It was followed by a post on his own social network Truth Social on Saturday claiming he would be arrested today and calling for protests. Trump hasn’t made those same claims or called for protests on Facebook or Twitter (perhaps he thinks it best to not poke the bear on his first post back?).
On Meta’s sites, the Trump campaign is running two ads (above), its first since 2020. One asks supporters to “Join the President’s Trust to Defend President Trump” that went live the day he claimed he’d soon be arrested.
Another ad began running today with a new video of Trump standing in front of U.S. flags saying he’s back on Facebook and asking supporters to donate. “If you have a lot of money, send us a lot of money, and if you don’t have very much, don’t send us anything, we love you anyway,” he says in the video. The Trump campaign has spent about $10,000 on the ads so far, according to Facebook’s Ad Library.
Trump is also fundraising through his mailing list, with a recent email that led with an image of a Fox News headline about his arrest prediction, according to a screenshot from @TrumpEmail, a Twitter account that tracks Trump’s email fundraising.
Trump is being investigated over alleged hush-money payments made to adult actor Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign, and a Manhattan grand jury could decide whether to indict him as soon as this week, according to reports. If indicted, Trump would be the first former U.S. president in history to face a criminal charge.
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I live here and love our city. I have a strong negative reaction to We Heart NY as a logo. It has a cheap and temporary look to it and echoing the Glaser original seems like a PR stunt. This email is the first time I’ve seen the creative for the campaign - I like broad the work is and this logo seems to be the glue that holds things together.
NYC government seems to have a thing for unexpected logos. The city logo that they spray paint on the side of all the cabs also got a harsh negative reaction when it came out.