From the Libertarian National Committee chair Nicholas Sarwark:
“This last weekend, the Libertarian National Committee met in Phoenix. After a lovely reception Friday evening, organized by the Libertarian Party of Arizona, the national committee members met on Saturday and Sunday. During the meeting, appointments for the Platform, Bylaws, and Credentials Committees were made.
The other major item on the agenda was a change to the Libertarian Party’s logo. After the last meeting in December, a subcommittee of Arvin Vohra, Brett Bittner, and Norm Olsen solicited over 200 entries in a design contest to create the next logo. Following their presentation of the entries at the meeting, the entire Libertarian National Committee narrowed it down to eight options Over the next few weeks, the members of the committee will be soliciting feedback on the finalists to determine which logo will be selected at an electronic meeting to be held on May 3, 2015.
The next in-person meeting of the Libertarian National Committee will be held July 18-19 in the Washington, D.C. area.”
Marc, it’s an old accountant’s saying about the green eyeshade guy that wants to reconcile every account, no matter how large, to the last penny even if it takes all year.
Profitable companies do have some advantages over the LP (and alt parties). There are many profitable companies, usually closely held, that are content to make their profits on stable sales. The owners remain comfortable and are big frogs in their pond. Sometimes it looks like the LP wants to emulate them. But the LP says it wants to be the biggest growth company ever seen, right? It can’t be comfortable slouching along on a level membership level and level votes for almost its entire existence. So how would a growth company LP work? Surely there’s some MBAs out there that have a clue. As to some specifics, let’s set up the At Large members as the Chair’s cabinet. Each fills a cabinet position, like Membership Acquisition, Fundraising,
Marketing, Affiliate Growth. Have the shareholders (delegates) elect At Large members for each specific post and hold them accountable for their area of responsibility. Regional Reps should have the specific responsibility to support and grow their affiliate states
(maybe even give them a budget to get around their region and work with the State Chairs).
Then the State Chairs have to hold the Regional Reps accountable and remove those who don’t or won’t work out. Forget the logo change and instead focus on realistic and sustainable ways to double active membership between every convention or know the reason why it can’t be done.
Hah! Hilarious. I am so stealing that phrase.
More of a bug.
I can do it as an IPR writer, but don’t have the ability to extend that capability to commenters who are not IPR writers.
Wish I could.
I didn’t suggest that good brands never change their logo. I said that *some* of the most iconic ones do not. I also said that the ones that do generally do so just slightly. That AT&T link is a very good example of small changes to a logo. Pepsi is another good case study in that regard.
Also important to note, some of those AT&T changes are related to mergers.
I guess editing for typos isn’t a feature here. 🙂
I think we have to ask ourselves: If the logo changed would you still support the party? I would.
If the logo changed (or was updated), I’d still be a supporter of the party. People saying Chevy doesn’t change their logo… the logical answer to that is: Neither would we of our logo was as good as Chevy’s bowtie. But the bowtie itself goes thru lots of stylistic changes keeping it current, and I think the winning move will be a new logo that compares well with our peers (the GOP and DNC) and still has at least a significant nod to Lady Liberty – either directly of in one of her iconic design elements.
And if the logo changed to a liberty bell, it’s not my preference, but there comes a time to ditch a dated image (gradients, excessive symbolism, etc) and get on the playing field with our peers. We’re getting ready to join the big game – as the party approaches a tipping point. And no matter what that logo is, I’ll support the party.
Remember that election philosophy we were taught as kids? “Just because you didn’t vote for him, doesn’t mean he isn’t your president.” We all know too much of our society is divided over grudges and bitterness, and those things are part of human nature. What sets us apart from the rest is we haven’t forgotten the honor that comes with a majority vote. If the minority respects the win, respect is returned. The same with bitter grapes…. more divisiveness.
What’s if gonna be?
I don’t know how to upload photos here, but a side-by-side image of the Democrat D and the big red GOP and then our intricate, complex, hard-to-read image with gradients and symbolism…. the need for a change seems obvious to me. And while some mega-corps do have a classic iconic logo, others change over time drastically. I’m not sure who’s larger, Chevy or AT&T – but check out the evolution of the AT&T logo. Corps do change when they need to. https://design365.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/att_logos.gif
I agree, the advice is potentially valuable. There’s just a lack of specifics there which doesn’t give those trying to deal with the practical details and nuts and bolts on a day to day basis much of a guideline for implementing the needed improvements.
ATBAFT offers a perspective that should not be ignored, I don’t know who he (or she) is but it sounds like (s)he is in my age group. The LP has been around too long to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Now is the time to get it right.
Profitable companies have some advantages over us.
They tend to have less turnover/more continuity on their boards, executive staff, bylaws/charter, etc. Those decisions are generally driven only by ROI, and to a much lesser degree by internal politics, than an alt party. And it’s a lot easier for them to raise capital and keep investors from leaving because it is a lot easier for them to show immediate readily visible and quantifiable ROI, as compared to an alt party in the US political system. They also have money to hire and fire staff to do tasks many of which the LP has to rely on volunteers for, or simply doesn’t even attempt. They tend to offer better salaries, job security and opportunities for advancement to potential employees than we can.
It is true, however, that alt parties can be run with varying degrees of competence. From what I have observed, Nick is doing better than the last few chairs, but he still has to put up with a variety of constraints ranging from the rest of the LNC to the policy manual to bylaws to Roberts Rules etc, and the constraints of too little money, too few staff and too few volunteers to do many of the things that need to be done.
If you have specific suggestions for improvement they may well be valuable, but even then we would have to convince the LNC, or in some cases convention delegates to pass them.
Simply observing that things are not as good as they could or should be does very little to help us get from here to there.
“gear maintenance of the machinery of freedom”.
I actually attended a Board of Directors meeting today of a profitable manufacturing company.
I assure you we didn’t do any “gear maintenance” or pick the flyshit out of pepper. The directors worry about the big picture and the direction of the company, new products, opportunities and challenges. The regional sales managers presented status reports for their regions and proposals to increase sales by X $ in Y time periods. Accountability was assigned and individual directors volunteered for responsibility. A few lagging products were discontinued or given one last chance (as were a few senior managers who were under performing). I’m sure some time-proven governance techniques could be adopted by an LNC (and probably is and I’m not just familiar with it any longer) but reading over the agendas and streamed comments for the last few years hasn’t done anything to convince me LNC is operating like an effective Board of Directors.
Fair enough. If you think of something, please let us know.
Don’t know – I left LNC because I was tired of spending >$3k per year discussing wording of fund raising letters, picking people for committees and finding half of them didn’t participate or wanted to wrangle over commas, trying to get regional reps to actually represent their regions, shifting $$$ around in budgets that never were fulfilled, and generally shuffling deck chairs on a ship that would never reach port. Little seems to have changed since then.
How would you run an LNC meeting to have it directly advance liberty? This is gear maintenance of the machinery of freedom.
>an updated Statue graphic that you may have seen on some Facebook memes
What’s a facebook? What’s a meme?
Seriously, to the highly limited degree any symbol is ever associated with the LP, especially by non-Libertarians, it’s Lady Liberty. If you have to explain the symbol (“A porcupine is defense-oriented and does not harm anyone who does not attack it”), you have already lost the person’s attention.
>And individual liberty was advanced how over this weekend meeting?
That’s always an aim of everything we do, but often we deal with internal matters like budgets and committee appointments which in of themselves don’t really achieve that purpose. But if we are a real political party and not just a debate club, then we have to do things like worry about fundraising, staffing, facilities, etc. in order to devote ourselves to the primary mission of running candidates for political office who espouse a freedom philosophy.
Matt is obviously right. So is ATBAFT.
And individual liberty was advanced how over this weekend meeting?
As I’ve said repeatedly, the less change, the better. Common knowledge tells you that, as does a hundred years or so of branding research and trial-and-error. I know that the LP is heavy in academicians. But, there are enough business people around that I’m surprised that the idea of a total logo change has gotten this far. An occasional freshening up may be a good idea (though, many of the most recognizable American brands essentially never do it. See GE, Chevy, McDonald’s, Coca-cola….). But, a huge change to a logo is almost never done, unless it comes along with a name change. Its never done because its a bad idea. It confuses the consumer (voter, average Joe, etc.), and, consequently, negates previous brand-building work.
If we were changing our name, changing our philosophical focus, running from a scandal, or something else where we wanted people to forget about the old LP, it *may* make sense. But, that ain’t what were doing here.
Ditto to what Mark said. Tweek what we have. Take the 1971 off. Put the sun to the statue’s right and rising (she faces east, so the sun would always be slightly south to her right).
Returning to the previous Statue logo is one of the options under consideration. There’s also an updated Statue graphic that you may have seen on some Facebook memes, as well as some designs that use iconography from the Statue rather than the Statue itself (i.e. the points of the crown, the torch, etc.).
Of the designs under consideration, I think only the Requena L with the negative space Liberty Bell doesn’t use the Statue or an element of the Statue.
Nick, Arvin, others:
Feedback on the logo is easy: Anything other than the Statue of Liberty is unacceptable.
I agree with Bill that she should be taken out of the shadows and her face should be more prominent as it was in the 1990’s version.
Thanks!