Politics & Government

City Leaders May Finalize Brand

Leaders will discuss moving forward with the city brand without an additional tagline underneath the words "Home of Honeymoon Island" at today's 6:30 p.m. commission meeting at City Hall.

When it came to a tagline for Dunedin's brand, city leaders wanted more.

City staff, however, is giving them none at tonight's city commission meeting, and is instead proposing moving forward with just the phrase "Home of Honeymoon Island" to convey the city's identity, after half a year of back-and-forth on the design.

Commissioner Julie Ward Bujalski told the logo's designer, Wilesmith Advertising, a West Palm Beach firm, that she wanted a slogan "a little more kitschy, a little more exciting, a little more cool" than the proposed "Life Flows Your Way" in April. 

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After three months of deliberation, two slogans were brought forth as possible alternates, according to city documents:

  • "Even when it's hot, it's cool" 
  • "Breeze in. Chill out"

But Wilesmith and city staff are not expected to endorse them.

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They will recommend moving forward on the $73,000 image with no slogan at all, "since it is not seen as necessary, and because additional words will detract from the logo/brand 'Dunedin, Home of Honeymoon Island'," a city memo states. 

The city already began using the image. It appears prominently on the  that was unveiled this week.

Commissioners approved the brand image — the word “DUNEDIN” in all-capital, multicolor letters with a wavy, tri-color E — on April 19. 

Commissioners kept the byline "Home of Honeymoon Island," but rejected the tagline "Life Flows Your Way."

"There are perception issues about what 'flows' is all about," Mayor Dave Eggers said in the April 19 meeting.

Dunedin's small business community brought the citywide branding initiative to the commission in April 2011 as a way to form a . It was approved in a 4-1 vote, with Dave Carson casting the dissenting vote.  

The project stalled at the outset when the , featuring a green and blue heart-shaped osprey and the byline/tagline "Home of Honeymoon Island/We'll Steal Your Heart" met mixed public opinion in January.

The branding selection committee scrapped it and returned to the commission with the current image in February. But it stalled again in March when residents noticed it looked , raising legal concerns about a possible copyright violation. The city attorney . The St. Pete Pier is being destroyed in May 2013.

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