Pic:
Edward VI indulges in a little re-branding of an already
famous logo...
Pruning The Rose
Our very own Regional
Development Agency - Yorkshire-Forward - steps out with
a website, a mission statement and little respect for
White Rose tradition. Phil O'Connor braves the
thorns.
____________________________
Although theYorkshire
Regional Development Agency have been
around since last year they have finally stepped
out into the
limelight in a joint partnership with the Yorkshire Tourist
Board. They have invented a Blairite alternate
reality
called "New Yorkshire". They are spending £300,000
on a drive to 're-brand' the county and improve it's
corporate
image at the Yorkshire International Business Convention
to be held in Leeds this June. The talk is of course
wrapped
in cultish business jargon, and will be sugared by Leeds-based
focus-groupers, but the message is pretty clear.
Our traditional image is old fashioned, wrong-headed
and bad for business.
The way that they intend to do this is to
create a new 'brand'. Marketing Consultants will be busy
creating a new 'look' which will involve a newly designed
logo that the Tourist Board will insist is the way forward
if we are to avoid turning into a third-world county.
The emphasis will be on what a flashy modern people we
are, with Internet cafes and cappuccino bars and shiny
Call Centre / Brave New Workhouses dominating the landscape.
To it's credit
the Agency, led by Graham Hall, is giving John Prescott
- Deputy Prime Minister and once a proud Yorkshireman
himself - a great deal of stick in order to get adequate
funding for its key objectives. Business growth, higher
business birth and survival rates, inward
investment, improved education and skills, community-based
regeneration and environmentally--sensitive exploitation
of the regions physical assets. In a county the size of
ours that needs money, and Prescott has yet to deliver.
But what is deeply worrying are the signals
put out by YF representatives about what these expensive
Out Thinker types are up to. Jargon like 'repositioning'
and 'branding' as if we are cans of beans. Snide comments
about our traditional image being negative and damaging
to business. Such things would have been a national scandal
if uttered in Scotland, a country whose population is
less than Yorkshire. The impression is of a bunch of people
riding roughshod over a proud heritage, and working to
undermine long traditions.
At
risk is our 'national' emblem, the Rose.
There have been strong hints that both Yorkshire-Forward
and Yorkshire Tourist Board are going to ditch the counties
oldest most identifiable emblem - the White Rose - in
favour of some "forward-looking and dynamic"
graphic dreamt up by some southern design consultant (Martin
Lambie-Nairn, anybody?) One look at YF's hopeless cog-like
logo shows that this is no idle threat. It is a truly
astounding proposition that in devolved and pride filled
Wales or Scotland would have all responsible thrown out
on their ear. In older days their heads would have been
put up on York's Micklegate Bar for less!
Our Rose is one of the oldest and most powerful
graphic devices in English History. It takes root in the
badge of Edward I ( a golden rose) whose descendants varied
it's tint to Red (the house of Lancaster) and to White
(the house of York). Henry Tudor famously united the two
roses into the Tudor Rose. The royal badge for England
is still the red and white rose united,

England's Royal
Badge
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slipped and leaved proper! As a piece of
graphic design it is a world famous heraldic device the
transcends language and speaks volumes. It embodies a
pride and a tradition that is second to none, connects
Yorkshire both to a rich chivalric history and to national
identity.
Everyone from a Japanese businessman, to
a small child in African village school understands the
deep value of images. Of local pride and a sense of worth
embodied by a sign and symbol. In the Yorkshire Rose -
a white five petalled Dog-rose within a cluster of five
others, a seeded centre and five sepal tips - we have
a living breathing modern symbol of who we are. Whether
we live in Tinsley or Timbuktu this is at the centre of
our sense of place, and sense of worth.
I can see that in a world of mobile phones,
of global communication, such notions of pride wrapped
up in a symbol must seem interchangeable. The world turns
and meanings change. Why not throw away age old traditions
and habits and reinvent the wheel. After all the pits
are gone, and the mills are closed. Whose to notice?
But a quick look around and symbolism is
alive and vibrant. And right at the centre of this is
our old friend the White Rose of York. Take the new emblem
of Leeds United
Football
Club, themselves no strangers to messing about with logos
( remember the Smiley logo of the Bremner era.) The club
is intimately tied up with media interests at the highest
level. Yet at the heart of their emblem is the white rose.
Not the lamb or the owl from the civic crest but the strongest
emblem of county pride. Any Leeds fan can tell you what
that means to them.
Surely in the White Rose of York we have
our greatest ambassador, an internationally recognised
emblem that is of proven value. It can be found on ancient
shields, on architectural cornices, in stained glass windows.
It has remained at the heart of our enterprise since ancient
times. Scrapping it now, at a time when regeneration is
the spirit of the day would surely be a monumental step
backwards, not forwards.
And you know what? If Yorkshire-Forward
don't get this right, the people of Yorkshire won't be
slow to let them know.