BY Armin

Mad About This

This is almost two months old, but it’s something I meant to post when it came out and somehow forgot to. The Community of Madrid, which is one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain, unveiled a new logo that they will use to promote Madrid-based businesses in other countries, complementing the launch of a network of offices around the world that will support the international endeavors of these businesses. The Community of Madrid already has a logo, a red square with the seven stars of Madrid’s flag, which some people argued would have been enough instead of having to make a new one — specially a new one with such an odd message.

President of the region, Esperanza Aguirre

“Mad About You,” seems like a catchy phrase derived from Madrid, but it’s surprising that for an international effort, no one mentioned that in the U.S. the only trigger to that phrase would be Paul Reiser’s quick-paced muttering in the namesake 1990s sitcom. And beyond the verbal oddity of this logo, designed by Cros & Machín, is the visual execution of “MADRID” in three different weights of Helvetica for no apparent reason. Not to mention the unnecessary cropping of the “R”, which according to their press release is meant to evoque the letter “ñ” — as a Spanish-speaking designer I have no idea why they would want evoke that for either design or language reasons. The only saving grace of this logo is the inclusion of the seven stars in the upper-right corner of the “M”, they could have probably stopped there — the banner in the photo below almost looks great.

\n\nThis is almost two months old, but it's something I meant to post when it came out and somehow forgot to. The Community of Madrid, which is one of the 17 autonomous communities of Spain, unveiled a new logo that they will use to promote Madrid-based businesses in other countries, complementing the launch of a network of offices around the world that will support the international endeavors of these businesses. The Community of Madrid already has a logo, a red square with the seven stars of Madrid's flag, which some people argued would have been enough instead of having to make a new one — specially a new one with such an odd message.

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