The “City” of Mississauga gets a cute new logo

Mississauga is the next municipality west of Toronto and is described in Wikipedia as “the largest suburb in Anglo-America by population.” For the past little while, their logo has been the one pictured above. I’ve always thought that they could’ve picked more appropriate slogans, such as…

Being in North America in the 21st century, where every act is a branding exercise, Mississauga is undergoing a rebranding and getting a new logo:

Nando Iannicca, a councillor for what Mississauga laughably calls a downtown, has made some rather stretchy claims in this Toronto Star article, of which my favourites are:

• “We’re more fresh and more vibrant compared to some older cities, be it a Montreal or Toronto.”
• “People forget, we’re a very young city. We’re the next Portland, we’re the next Barcelona. We are the future.”

The next Portland, Maine, maybe, if it worked on having some actual charm. Geez, they get a couple of curvy condo buildings (with terrible maintenance records, I might add), and they think they’re the effing home of Gaudi.

Mississauga’s logo reminds me of a couple of icons I see on a daily basis on my iPhone — this one…

…and this one:

Which makes sense: like Mississauga, email apps are cheap, cheerful, serve a useful function, are 90% spam, and are at their best when they’re not noticed. Of course, if that’s the message you’re trying to get across, this logo — which comes with a slogan, just like Mississauga’s old one — is the one they should go with: