The M for Manchester, designed by Peter Saville, one of Britain’s most celebrated designers, is now visible on the streets of Manchester. Here it is on a new Manchester City Council sign on Oxford Road near the BBC. It replaces the earlier sign which inlcuded the 2002 games logo.
The M consists of multi pastel colour neon-style lines, interlinking and overlapping to form a distinctive new logo for Manchester. Also on the sign is a new rendering of the City of Manchester coat of arms, still bearing the city motto ‘Concilio et Labore’ the rough meaning of which is ‘through (good) counsel and (hard) work’.
But EOM asks: Which Manchester are we talking about? The M appears to refer only to the City of Manchester, not the wider Manchester conurbation, currently divided up into separate and competing local authorities, of which the City of Manchester is only one. EOM contends that Manchester will only achieve its true potential when there is a single unifying city authority covering the area inside the M60 motorway, and beyond. That’s the Manchester that this M should to be referring to.
One point of clarification, this location on Oxford Road next to the Mancunian Way is not the boundary of the City of Manchester, but an important gateway point southern edge of Manchester city centre. EOM will be taking more photos of the new M on signs around the city.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Karsten // Sep 11, 2006 at 4:08 pm
it\’s a bit of a surprise for me to see Peter Saville\’s M-design on a road sign.
There must have been a big change of mind and intention since in \’Form - the making of design\’ magazine # 207 March/April 2006 he stated: \”We haven\’t released this bit of graphics yet because I have not wanted it to be seen as a logo. It\’s not. We call it the \”brand signifier\”. We want it to function like a royal warrant.\”
Gerrit Terstiege of Form asked: \”So the brand signifier will only be used for events that will introduce Manchester
as the original modern city?\”
PS: \”Yes, and we have a fantastic one already. The Manchester International Festival. Apart from that we are intending to do an information campaign to communicate the brand values: \”What do we mean by original and modern?\”
It will take a generation. But we\’ve got to start somewhere. If you don\’t start you don\’t get there.\”
Now what\’s funny is that neither the website http://www.manchesterinternationalfestival.com nor the site
http://www.manchesterfacts.com use the striped M brand thing.
To me it seems like after the start someone has got lost and now disorientatedly drops his brand signifier here and there and later everywhere along the way.
The royal warrant symbolises the respect generations of people had for its institution, the logo that isn\’t a logo soon will be less than any logo that stands at least for something.
This logo is a mere striped M until now and we will have to see what else it will become in the future.
2 Yisraelee // Sep 13, 2006 at 4:43 pm
EOM asks why this sign is on the gateway to the city (centre).
The fact is, the \’city\’ is the city centre with the suburbs spreading outwards (despite joining onto various other municipal councils).
3 Aidan O'Rourke // Sep 13, 2006 at 4:50 pm
If that is the case, then this use of ‘City’ in ‘City of Manchester’ is ambiguous, because ‘City of Manchester’ usually refers to the local authority area, stretching from the Airport in the south to Heaton Park in the north. Thanks very much Yisraelee for your comment.
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