Melbourne - do yourself a favour.

Have you been following the furore over the new city of Melbourne brand identity. Well, in a nutshell, public money used to commission Landor for new brand work. Herald Sun goes ape shit over the whole expense ($240k); gets a bunch of students to knock up some alternatives.

So, what's my beef? Not the money, not the design, not even the outrage. It's the cheapening of the whole process through the low quality debate. Yes, it could have been done for less. Yes, it could have been given to a Melbourne agency to do. But the public debate has, not surprisingly for journalism, gone for the lowest common denominators. Money; not invented here; it's "just" a logo; my kids could do better. Frankly, from the self proclaimed city of culture the debate is rubbish (one great exception from Peter Singline commenting in B&T).

If Melbourne wants to do it's brand a favour then they could start by elevating the level of debate about a really important question - what is Melbourne?