Sarasota city logo will remain the same for now

David is going to be hanging around Sarasota City Hall for a while longer.

During Monday’s meeting, the Sarasota City Commission tabled indefinitely any changes to the city’s logo, putting off a potentially seven-figure rebranding of the city’s graphic identity for the foreseeable future. 

The unanimous decision means the silhouette image of the Michelangelo’s unclad David, a replica of which is regarded as a centerpiece of The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, will continue to emblazon the city’s signage, vehicle fleet, staff uniforms, municipal buildings and more.

The city embarked on updating its branding in May 2021 when commissioners retained the services of design and communications firm DreamLarge to create a new official city seal and, perhaps later, a new logo. After adopting the new seal in Nov, 2022, the city opted to bring the logo effort in-house, employing the graphic expertise of employee Ciera Coleman, who was recently named the new administrator of the public art program. 

Coleman and Director of Governmental Affairs Jennifer Jorgensen presented initial concepts to the commission in April 2024, leaving with two directives: make more recognizable the proposed stylized COS (for City of Sarasota) and include David in at least one version; and to survey the public on the final proposed designs. They returned with five different versions, ranked public preferences backed by the survey results. The second option was to keep the current logo.

Courtesy images

Mindful of expressing their admiration of Coleman’s work on the proposed new designs, commissioners were in lockstep that, with some residents still in the throes of storm recovery and the city’s associated costs, now is not the time to undertake a costly rebranding effort.

“I was leaning toward keeping our same logo, but just changing the typeface,” said Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch. “A complete rebrand is a really complicated and expensive thing to do. There are all kinds of invisible costs in rebranding. Typically, when you do a rebrand, you do it all at once and make a statement about it, and there is a cost associated with that. It's probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Actually, it’s more like $800,000 to $1 million, Jorgensen offered as a very rough estimate.

While not in disagreement with Ahearn-Koch’s sentiments, Coleman did point out that, since the logo was adopted in the 1980s, multiple versions with minor tweaks have emerged, rendering inconsistent, albeit subtle, branding across different departments. If anything, she posited, commissioners may want to consider updating the font, narrowing in on colors and modernizing some of the graphic elements of the current logo.

Courtesy image

“We don't really have a brand, and we have four different logos, or five, or however many,” Coleman said. “We could even take (the current) one and refine it and create a brand out of it. Maybe there's a way to keep this one, clean it up slightly, modernize the lines a little bit, and that might be another option to consider.”

There was some debate among commissioners on the merits of the image of David dominating the logo. Ahearn-Koch called it essential to the city’s identity. Kathy Kelley-Ohlrich was equally adamant that, if the logo were to be changed, David should step off the pedestal. Then there was the middle ground occupied by Kyle Battie.

“I couldn’t care one way or the other. I’m fine with the logo as is. I don't see the public outcry to change it,” Battie said. “I don't see the need for it, especially in light of all that’s happened in recent months. The city logo is the last thing on people's minds when we really have people out there struggling and suffering.

“We all know what David represents. I don't have a problem with that, and I don't have a problem if we got rid of him. A million dollars, that's a lot of money.”

Battie described a recent conversation with a city employee who told him of the need for more or new equipment, such as trucks.

“Things like that we need to be concerning ourselves with,” Battie said. “This naked guy running around the city. I'm cool with putting it on the back burner.”

Striking an accord with Battie, Mayor Liz Alpert agreed the city faces higher priorities for both its time and resources, suggesting the logo matter be tabled for possible future discussion. But if she were to select one, Alpert said her preference was Option 2, featuring likenesses of the letter C in blue to represent the Gulf of Mexico, the letter O in orange to represent the sun and the letter S in green to represent natural resources. 

In the ranked choice survey voting, that was also the most popular choice among the public.

“I never imagined you that something so beautiful and creative could be created,” Ahearn-Koch said of Coleman’s work. “We've got big items ahead of us budget-wise. After our hurricanes, I think we all know what's in front of us, and I'm not sure this is where we should be putting our dollars is in the complete rebrand of our logo.”