Chisago County chooses new logo

Chisago County commissioners approved a new logo for the county at their Wednesday, May 1 meeting.

But the presentation included some pushback from one commissioner on the new logo's color choices.

Katie Malchow, the county’s outreach and initiative coordinator, unveiled the logo at the start of the meeting. Before the unveiling, she explained the scope of the project, which began in October of 2023.

“The purpose of this project was to identify a current logo and branding guidelines to create a new, cohesive brand that will be implemented throughout Chisago County’s governmental entities,” Malchow said.

She said the reasons for the project were that the earlier logo was incredibly complex and difficult to reproduce.

“It’s hard to get a sense of what it is [when you look at it] from a distance,” Malchow said. “We wanted a logo that would be quick in sending a message, telling a story. We wanted it to be easily identified.

“We also wanted a guide, a document so that it would not be manipulated or used in a way that was not representative of Chisago County.”

So Malchow and a committee, which included five department members along with commissioners Jim Swenson and Marlys Swenson, worked with Olive and Company, a marketing and branding company based in Minneapolis but with several local representatives.

The group spent extensive time researching the project, including conducting interviews around the county to determine a “brand platform,” a marketing document that clearly identifies the purpose of the county.

“This [tells people] who we are, and it presents key resources for us to use when telling people about Chisago County,” Malchow said.

From there Olive and Company presented three potential logo drafts, including one very similar to the past logo.

“The committee decided very intentionally, when we looked at all three, we chose to be brave,” Malchow said. “We wanted to go forward with something that was fresh, something that was new.”

After numerous iterations, the committee finally settled on the logo that it presented to the committee.

Commissioner Ben Montzka approved of the design, but he did not approve the colors of orange and purple combined in the logo.

“I would like to know why your art department chose two colors that are next to one another and not particularly complimentary,” he said.

Both Dunne and Swenson defended the color logo, and Malchow

“We knew going into this that not everybody was going to love it, and not everybody was going to understand it,” Dunne said. “We had the luxury of a process that we went through and grew to love it, and we ask that you trust that process.”

Montzka said he did like the design, which Malchow said had numerous “messages.”

“Originally we had ‘Minnesota’ on the logo, and one of the other versions had ‘USA’ as part of its logo,” she said. “The USA was the only part that we liked of that logo, so we kept that moving forward. …

“We wanted to be bigger. By putting USA on it, we put ourselves on a bigger map than Minnesota. … It also shows our love of country and care of veterans, and we think this is a way to incorporate that into our new brand.”

Montzka asked if the decision could be delayed to give more deliberate thought to the logo, noting that he had just seen it for the first time.

Swenson said the committee had gone through a number of color combinations to settle on the logo, and Dunne said she was ready to rely on the team that put together the logo and support its final decision.

The logo was approved 4-1, with Montzka the lone nay vote.

The next step in the process will be to come back with a brand policy and brand guide for the logo so that it can be implemented as soon as possible.