What's in a Logo?

When Diversity Weakens Design

There are many immigrant services agencies around Toronto. One of the most famous is an organization called COSTI. It was originally founded in the 1950s for Italian immigrants, mostly to help them with trades-related employment.

It has since grown to accommodate any current immigrant that enters Toronto.

Recently, the organization updated its website, and even changed its logo.


Original COSTI logo

Its original logo, obviously meant to represent the colors of the Italian flag, was much more dynamic and effective. It had three colors (red, green and usually a tan background rather than pure white), and a subtle symbolism with the red line indicating some kind of path into the horizon, leading the new immigrant straight into their new society. Its colors, concepts and message was more diverse.


New COSTI logo

The new logo has a two color scheme: a bland white background and an indeterminate (is it green, turquoise or blue?) logo. Thin, awkward lines resembling the skeleton of a not very stable umbrella embrace the diversity that COSTI is now meant to represent. Rather than indicating a path of integration as the original red line seems to imply, this broken skeleton of an umbrella suggests instead that these diverse newcomers remain under a separate, unified ghetto, rather than seek the manifold opportunities of an open society.

Diversity, in this case, means a badly designed logo, a paucity of colors and mixed (or even incompatible – for the new immigrant) messages. Diversity becomes enclosure - a lack of diveristy.

The proud Italians at least understood that their bold colors would get them into their new society. Whereas this new diversity seems to prefer that its members remain in the bland, broken and unstable boundaries of its own making.

My humble advice to COSTI would have been: do not change the logo. The Italians have left a mark in Toronto. Their success can only serve as a role model for future immigrants. Just the bold confidence of the original logo's design would have conveyed that!

But, I'm afraid in these days of diluted diversity, COSTI deliberately sought just the kind of logo they got.

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The Global Runway Part 2

Wrinkles, Straps and Short Hemlines

Vera Wang is the most famous wedding dress designer out there.

And once again, the informal wins the day in her Spring 2006 Wedding collection.

Compared to Amsale's serious formality, Wang seems to revert back to the dishevelled, rebel adolescent.

Surprisingly, her best cut wedding dresses are the short ones. But she is just following a certain juvenile tendency exhibited by many top designers these days.

Of course, designers don’t come out of the blue, they have to cater to their clientele. Yet, I can’t help but believe that people will follow the choices designers make, rather than dictate how these designers should design.

Designing is a big responsibility. Which requires a strong mind, and an even stronger principle.

Some Vera Wang examples:

Straps and lace;Wrinkles and uneven hemlines. Radical statements.

And her best designs also come incomplete - in length!

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The Global Runway Part 1

Formality and Culture

One of the most formal events of anyone's life is one's wedding. So, it seems hardly surprising that (Ethiopian) American fashion designer Amsale chose to design wedding dresses.

Amsale's Christian, formalized background, I would argue, led her to pursue one of the most formal clothings of all.

At her wedding, a girl is finally a woman. She leaves her parents' home to start her own. And will soon have her own children with whom she must interact as a fully matured adult.

Although, in Christian households, there is a hierarchy of adults, the woman is still the head of the internal runnings of the household, and the behavior and upbringing of the children. She cannot afford to regress into the child she was at her parents’ home.

That is the ideal, in any case.

So, the wedding dress expresses this ideal. It shows a formal and aesthetic acceptance of the woman's adulthood and womanhood at a most important turning point in her life.

Amsale captures this beautifully.

Almost all of her designs are exquisitely formal. Her choice of the stiffer satin rather than the formless silk, her clinching of the waist, her emphasis on clean, straight lines, and above all a mature femininity of beautiful lacework, show her innate understanding of this unique moment in a woman’s life.

I’m not surprised that Amsale has so far stuck with designing bridal wear, rather than branching out into other clothing lines

Until she has mastered her trade to the level of the formal designer greats like Valentino, she is better off keeping out of the limelight which might force her to compromise her style for the running market.

At least, that would be my advice to her.



Amsale's ivory-toned wedding gowns

(click on image to see larger version)

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