Last Wednesday morning, Italian president Romano Prodi and his minister of culture, Francesco Rutelli, unveiled a new logo and slogan for the country. The slogan reads ‘Italy leaves its mark’ and the presentation coincided with the launch of the Italy portal, www.italia.it.

There are plenty of views expressed on designer’s sites and on the whole they are negative. The attention is hardly surprising given the wide ranging views people will have surrounding how a country is represented by a symbol.

Prodi comments that Italy should have “a graphic symbol which delivers a message”. What message does the symbol portray to you? How important is a logo in determining the success of a country’s brand? Does the green shape remind you of mini golf, the shape of Italy or something else?

I came across the new logo yesterday afternoon and after a second look today I’m perched on the uninspired side of the fence. One of my main criticisms is the use of four fonts, differing weights and mixed cases. It emotes a tired, complicated and inconsistent feel. [Read more →]

Enjoy England have launched a six month campaign called ‘England Rocks‘ to make the most of increased interest in live music. There has been a proliferation in music festivals in the last few years, one that springs to mind was the ‘Innocent Drinks‘ free festival organised last year.

The campaign rides on the back of this spurt of interest and ties in with Britain’s rich musical past and the Cavern club’s forthcoming 50th anniversary and encourages site visitors to visit the locations and destinations linked to icons past and present.

Visitors browse a database organised into four categories (Beatlemania, Festivals, Places of Interest and Venues) and ten English regions. Results are displayed in a Flash driven jukebox and alongside a Google powered map pinpoints each place of interest, with up to 200 at present.

I like the campaign. Let’s take a closer look at the site and how it operates. [Read more →]

Courtesy of the thetravelprblog.com I saw this link to Christian Watson’s post entitled ‘Would You Visit These US States Based on Their Web Sites?’. Christian has attached a homepage screenshot for each fifty US states ranked ‘The Best’, ‘The Second Tier’ and ‘The Rest’. Alongside each he has a brief opinion on the designs. It’s an interesting exercise to compare the home page design and architecture of each. Jermayn Parker has done the same for Australian states. Expect to see something on the Dot Tourism blog for the UK soon.

According to research by Continental Research, the UK is the top destination for internet users when planning their holidays and it is estimated that 17 million people will book part or all of their holiday online. The poll also outlined the importance of tourist board websites in providing value to visitors. It is going to be interesting to see how these sites evolve in the face of social networking sites. Tourist boards and Destination marketing organisations do have advantages over other sites, such as a high level of public trust and that they act as a first base for consumers before they look into specific tourism services. [Read more →]