The city of Bellevue has been sporting its colorful quilted “B” logo since at least 2015. It has been displayed on banners along Fairfield Avenue and is used regularly by the city government, the Bellevue Business Alliance and other Bellevue-focused groups.
As it’s been around for going on a decade, city and business leaders expressed a desire to change things up a bit. Yet, there was little money for a major branding in the budget. Fortunate for the city, two of its residents happen to be Kevin Wright and Joe Nickol, the founders of the urban design, planning and development firm Yard & Co.
At the city’s April council meeting Wright presented a few ideas to freshen up the city’s logo and visuals. He worked with Assistant City Administrator Pierce Turner to come up with a few visual changes to the city’s logo.
“Joe, my partner, and I, are the owners of the firm and we live here in Bellevue. We were asked by Pierce, Melissa, Frank and the mayor to take a look at the logo, which was a really smart move, I think, because you guys are undergoing a big website change…And we were happy to help and appreciate being involved,” said Wright.
He explained that the city had very little money to work with, and so the project became a “refresh” more than a major overhaul or rebranding.
“We didn’t want to do something that would trigger a lot of change and a lot of community engagement. It was more about taking the logo and just modernizing it to meet the new century, and to meet a more modern day website. So we did that,” said Wright.
He noted that the changes to the city’s seal were minor. He suggested updating the font and keeping the outline of the current images of buildings, the river, etc., so that the changes didn’t lead to bigger, more expensive projects like changing signage and wayfinding.
The biggest change is for Bellevue’s “B.” It moves away from the multicolor quilt design to a one-color version that emphasizes the city’s riverfront connections. He suggested blue, a golden yellow and white as possible variations as well as a few ideas for changing some of the fonts used in city visuals.
Pointing to the new ideas for the “B” he said, “Taking the two on the right and having a little bit more fun with how you might use them, say on a t-shirt, a notepad, some of your trucks that you use for public services, and whenever you update those events the city does around town.
Wright said that while he was very involved with the project, the firms Oklahoma-based designer led the effort, “which I thought was really good because he didn’t have a biased point of view of Bellevue.”
“We’ve sent him our opinions about what we think Bellevue stands for in words like quaint, walkable, historic, safe, affordable, on the river, very livable. And then let him go to town. Oftentimes, if you’re too close to something, it’s hard to actually look at it in an honest way and provide a good design. He did a great job with that,” said Wright.
City Administrator Frank Warnock said the project only cost the city $1000, a fraction of what a major branding project would cost.
Council members said they were happy with the changes and, in fact, the city has been using the new logo for several weeks.