Updated on April 23: April Reiling, the town's marketing manager, says the Town Council defeated the logo on a vote of 3-2. Mayor Connie White was absent from the meeting but, even had she been there and voted for the new design, it wouldn't have made a difference since a tie vote counts the same as a losing vote.
Reiling says the town is putting the logo project aside for the moment while it focuses on updating the town's website. But, she promises, the town will eventually adopt a new logo. The old one's outdated and too intricate to be easily reproduced on city documents, signs, and the like.
Original post: The logo for the town of Trophy Club is consists of a star-studded, presidential-looking seal framing the town's signature clock tower. A pair of crossed flags, one for the U.S., one for Texas, jut in either direction. A black-and-gray ribbon unfurls underneath emblazoned at the center with a blue Dallas Cowboys star.
It's a serviceable enough municipal emblem, but, let's be honest, a tad bit busy. It also looks as though it was created at the same time as the town, in 1985.
Officials began talking about jettisoning the old logo in 2008, but it wasn't until the town's Economic Development Corp. commissioned a new basic design, three years later, things really got under way. From there, city staff and a couple of appointed committees sifted through a small handful of options, varying somewhat in color and style, and settled on one featuring a black "T" and "C" intersecting near a star in the shape of a flag.
In materials included in a Town Council agenda, staff members describe the design as "flexible, unique, simple and memorable" and say it's "creative and reflects Trophy club culture."
Little did they know they were going to spark a massive civic debate, some of which is playing out on the (closed) Residents United for Trophy Club Facebook page.
Some are concerned that public input, solicited at community meetings and in an online survey, was ignored. Some don't want to spend the $32,000 it will take to put the new logo on signs, business cards, letterheads, and other city property, which is in addition to the $30,000 already paid in consulting fees. Some simply like the old flag.
Others, it seems, are worried about Marxist overtones.
"[T]his was NOT the favorite of the Vision Committee," one woman writes on the Facebook page. "We were initially shown an earlier version of this logo which was met with a largely negative response. Beyond comments comparing it to the Cuban flag, a hammer and sickle, a pitchfork or even the logo of the Minnesota Twins, many thought it to have a sharp or angry overtone."
And while allusions to baseball and farming can be lived with, the taint of Communism cannot. We have a call in to April Reiling the town's marketing manager, to see if she's interested in weighing in on the controversy or the political and economic message of the sign.
The Town Council seemed inclined to listen to the concerns, having sat on the issue for the past year. Last April, they asked for more input to be gathered. In October, a committee voted to "soften" the logo. Last January, they even approached Byron Nelson High School to see if any artistically inclined students might be able to design something better but received no response. And so, they will vote tonight whether to adopt the flag logo.
It should be an interesting meeting.
