Manatee or mullet? Either way, Sarasota wants a new seal

During a discussion at City Hall on Monday, City Commissioner Hagen Brody posed a question to his fellow officials that nobody was able to answer definitively: What animal, exactly, is depicted in the city seal?

A majority of the commission expressed a lack of enthusiasm for the city’s current iconography, voting 4-1 to hire Sarasota-based branding company DreamLarge to lead an effort to develop new designs for the city’s logo and seal. The city will pay DreamLarge $25,000 to run a community engagement campaign that includes a design competition for a new seal, a process the company expects to take three months.

The city’s logo, adopted in 1988, features a silhouette of Michelangelo's statue of David, a replica of which stands at The Ringling. The city's official seal, which dates to 1902, includes marine and coastal imagery — including a sea creature that might be a manatee or a mullet, depending on who you ask.

Commissioners who favored the redesign process said it made sense for the city to refresh its branding for the first time in more than three decades. Mayor Erik Arroyo said he felt no strong attachment to the inclusion of David in the city logo, stating he felt there were images that could more strongly represent the city, such as the John Ringling Causeway.

“The community from the ‘80s is definitely different from the community now,” Arroyo said.

Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch was the dissenting vote against hiring DreamLarge.

Ahearn-Koch expressed concern about the cost associated with replacing the city logo and seal on items such as street signs, uniforms and letterheads. City Manager Marlon Brown said he could not provide an estimate about the expenses the city may incur at Monday’s meeting, but he said he intended for the city to phase in the adoption of a new logo over several years as vehicles are replaced and new uniforms are procured.

Although Brown stated he believed the phase-in approach would allow the city to avoid bearing any additional costs tied to a new logo, Ahearn-Koch said she feared the city would have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of a redesign. 

“It’s an incredible investment, and I think it’s just not a good way for us to be spending our city taxpayer dollars at this point in time,” Ahearn-Koch said.

DreamLarge previously led efforts to produce logos for The Bay Sarasota, the Library Foundation for Sarasota County and All Faiths Food Bank.