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Home Contacts Calendar 10km Series Super Series Blister Results & Ladders Sydney Runs +Maps |
A rown tuit is something we never got. Yes, we never got a rown tuit. What I'm talking about is a story that should have been told three years ago - how Sydney Striders acquired its new logo. So settle back and listen. It happened like this:
The club underwent a sea change in 1993. The incoming committee, under new president Alf Field, was all fired up to revitalise the club's fortunes. Amongst other things, we pushed hard to become a driving force for a Sydney Marathon (even before that little Spaniard said: "And the winner is .... Thydoney!") and we searched high and low for a club sponsor. We were successful in the latter, DHL taking the bait, and we hoped for a long term partnership. We also had an obligation to add DHL's logo to our uniforms and banners, so they would need a rethink anyway.
Before doing so, the club's committee posed two questions: Will the old logo, designed 13 years ago, continue to serve us well for the next 10+ years? If not, what should a new one look like? If a new one was required, it had to take into account the vision we had for our club in 10 to 15 years' time, ie heavily involved in major international events like the Sydney Marathon; strong membership growth; association with, or maybe even acquisition of, other clubs; Striders to become a major recreational club a la New York Athletic Club; and probably with affiliates in other Australian cities and towns, all following the Striders model.
So the Committee went to prominent club members who represent several of Australia's top advertising companies. McCarthy Watson & Spencer (McWasp) picked up the challenge. The club is now in debt to their generosity. Anyone who has had to acquire good graphic design respects the amount of effort and expertise involved - not to mention the cost. So Wayne and Hugh's highly skilled graphic artists, David Petschack and Paul Smith, gave it their best shot, guided by the club's committee.
Their advice was that the existing logo had passed its use-by date. It lacked pizzazz. It was too like the State Bank logo. The overall shape was prosaic. The italicised seriphon style of the words was now musty with age. When placed beside sponsors' logos, the contrast would be highlighted. The two words "Sydney" and "Striders" had equal emphasis, but common usage was just "Striders". Our colours were OK, but a bit monochrome, and anyway, the exact green was anybody's guess.
David and Paul presented the committee with more than a dozen new shapes and styles. Some incorporated a stylised Sydney Harbour Bridge or Opera House (done to death by others, they felt). One even had a representation of Uluru underneath!
The committee studied them, debated them (everyone's an expert when it comes to logos) and generally thought long and hard about them. If you had all the time in the world you might have put them on display for everyone to comment, then try and sort out arguments between the traditionalists and the avant garde. But we didn't. The club committee is elected to manage and take decisions - and that's just what we did.
The chosen logo had what we were looking for: the single word "Striders" fitted neatly in an imagined square box, allowing a less dominant sponsor's logo to be placed below and to the right. If there were no sponsor, our logo would still appear balanced with that space empty. Putting a smaller "Sydney" between the "t" and "d" of the primary word, eliminating the dot over the "i", was a good solution because if, in time, other towns and cities in Australia were persuaded to emulate our model and become affiliated with our club, they could replace "Sydney" with the name of their home town. We may be proud but we're not parochial! In any case, sloping the word "Striders" up to the right represents the hills we train on in Sydney. Lovely symbolism, don't you think?
The master-stroke (forgive the pun) was the "flash" underneath. It's the go-fast stripe, the bit of pizzazz that's reflected in so many modern logos. (Now that I've mentioned it, you'll see them everywhere. Even Hyatt has one!) The orange was carefully chosen so that future gear designers could go mad with orange splashes, swirls, stripes, whatever took their imagination, on top of our basic green and white. And our colours are now defined in the Pantone system. For the record, the green is PMS 340, the orange is PMS 144, and the white is - well - white!
So there you have it - at least until someone comes up with a better one. Oh, and the cheetah? I have to tell you it's no longer part of our logo. Our advisers persuade us that it spoils an otherwise clean, modern style - and anyway, it isn't an Aussie animal. However, if someone out there would like to bring us a modern rendering of some quick Australian fauna, (NOT another bloody kangaroo, spare us!), or even a simpler line drawing of the original cheetah, I'm sure no-one would have a problem.
I welcome John Turner's explanation of the rationale behind the change in Sydney Striders' logo. However, the club's name, colours, font and logo were all well researched back in 1980 and introduced with precise logic. While I and many others support progress and welcome change, there needs to be a compelling reason to change and there is a need to ensure that the original intention, if appropriate, is maintained.
The logo was introduced to be both a marketing billboard for the club and a geographic statement of the origin of the athlete. I have run and raced interstate and overseas and have found that having "Sydney" emblazoned front and back has served a number of purposes.
On training runs it has prompted runners who I meet while training to start up a conversation about Sydney and dispel the myth of the loneliness of the long distance runner. In races far from home, without any personal support, it has been a revelation to have spectators and competitors sing out "Go Aussie" or "On you, you creepy cockroach", something they may well not have done had it been only "Striders" that they read.
In the new logo we have lost the visibility of the word "Sydney" and the unexpected and spontaneous support we needed after hitting the wall at 35km, or when we had lost the plot in a fast road race and become defeatist. And now that Atlanta is over, Sydney will be the buzz-word for the next four years - we will have lost the recognisable noun of the future.
The font is also an emotional issue, and based on my research Striders' original logo has widespread support. We have had three logo changes in six years - the issue needs further debate to resolve our identity once and for all! Are IBM, Coke and McDonalds, with their "prosaic logos, lacking in pizzazz, that are musty with age and past their use-by date" about to do a U-turn on their traditional images?
Incidentally the cheetah, although supposedly abandoned, was incorporated into the latest changes to the club shorts by appearing on the rear. There was sound logic behind the choice of the cheetah as our club emblem. The symbolism is that it's the fastest creature on land, and if we replace the cheetah with an Australian creature, no matter how fast, we will have lost that symbolism.
Finally, I feel that in moving to the new logo only on the front of the vest we have also lost a further billboard and geographic statement. Our club name in large letters on the back of the vest would frequently generate a comment from some unfortunate runner you were passing or from the spectator who missed you from the front, and would often elicit encouragement from a faster runner coming past while you were struggling.
