Green and gold coronavirus is our new logo

Do you think Australia’s new logo looks … a bit like the coronavirus?

Do you think Australia’s new logo looks … a bit like the coronavirus? We’re reliably informed the design was first floated more than 12 months ago, in June last year, well before the virus was first detected. However, in a case of awkward timing, it (and a whole hub of branding resources) will be rolled out during the next three to four weeks, before Victorians in hot spots come out of lockdown. We know what you’re thinking. Didn’t they run it past focus groups?

Yes — Austrade allocated $3.2m for our “new national brand” in 2018-19, including more than $420,000 to a market research company called Fiftyfive5. Trade Minister Simon Birmingham is positively aware it looks a tad COVID. His response? “I don't hold myself out as some advertising or marketing guru, that’s what we have the experts for, but I think people will see that it is a stylistic, modern representation of Australia.”

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack is more blunt: “It’s gold. The virus is red.” We wonder what Scott Morrison thinks of the novel comparison — he used to work in marketing, right?

 

Wattle we do

If it’s not a deadly pandemic cell, what is it? A gold wattle, obviously! Let us explain. In February, the government quietly accepted recommendations from the little-known National Brand Advisory Council to streamline Australia’s international image — think of New Zealand’s “100% Pure” and silver fern. The $10m committee was formed under Malcolm Turnbull’sgovernment in June 2018 and is chaired by mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest. Its 12 members, including Atlassian tech bro Mike Cannon-Brookes, Australia Post boss Christine Holgate, Coopers beer brewer Glenn Cooper and Irish-born Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce, picked the not “immediately recognisable internationally” national flower over a kangaroo because apparently there already are too many roos out there. We’ll let them explain their vision. “Our proposed Nation Brand mark balances a literal and abstract interpretation of a wattle flower,” the council’s report says. “It’s an optimistic burst of gold positivity. The letters AU have been chosen as a visual shortcut that immediately communicates ‘Australia’ … The AU is also the periodic table element code for gold, which provides a connection to Australia’s scientific endeavours and our mineral-rich past and future.” They also updated our national slogan (or as the experts call it, a “storytelling platform”) from “Australia Unlimited” to “Only in Australia”.

Hip, hop, hooray

Before you get hopping mad, Birmingham insists they aren’t shooting the kangaroo. The new font even has an R with a “kangaroo tail-like end”. The COVID wattle is replacing the old “Australia Unlimited” logo, two orange boomerangs in the shape of a map of Australia. The green and gold Australian Made is staying put, but it’s getting a makeover. “What we are doing,” Birmo says, “is just shifting and modernising the colour palette, the kangaroo a little bit to reflect the gold that is used in this wattle. So, it’s sticking very much with (the) green and gold theme. But currently people would see it as a bit more green and yellow, and we’re going at a deeper, richer gold, a deeper richer green.” The cost of this new colour palette? $5m.

 

Wannabe Noble

“I don’t know if you’re across this but currently the country’s going through what scientists call the ‘Spice Girls paradigm’,” comedian Ross Noble informed Ten’s nightly panel show The Project. “Hang on, what’s the Spice Girl paradigm?” inquired host Lisa Wilkinson. Noble delivered the punchline via video link from his Mornington Peninsula home: “Everyone’s trying really hard but Victoria’s ruining it.”

Cancelled leave

Thoughts and prayers to Dan Andrews. The Victorian Premier was set to go on leave next week (to coincide with school holidays) but it has been spiked because of, well, the COVID spike. Labor MP Peter Khalil hit back at the NSW government’s $11,000 fine for interlopers who cross the border: “The arrogance of some people in NSW to think (Melbanians) will try to escape to Sydney when they can still get a better takeaway coffee even in a locked-down suburb beggars belief.”

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