Is It Time For Sarasota To Have A New Logo?

Sarasota is a pretty rad city, except maybe for people like me who use the word rad.

SarasotaDay believes this art-filled city can be awesome if it just does 10 things, and one that sticks out is ditching the statue of David and opting for something new and fresh to update its look:

"Our city is changing. Our heritage remains our strength - but we are forced to evolve in order to preserve what we love. We need to show the world and our community that we are serious about our evolution, and this is why I believe it is important to create a new brand for this transition. The statue of David is not who we are. It's time to make the change."

Sarasota has a replica of Michelangelo's David at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, where John Ringling placed the statue in the sculpture garden, and City Hall liked it so much that it's been around for the last 40-plus years as the city's logo.

SarasotaDay, a product of business and tech incubator HuB, is not the only one who would like to see the logo go. 

Max Parse posted a long comment on a 2011 Observer story about marketing the city and set out his argument then for ditching David. Here are the key parts from Parse's proposal:

"For years Sarasota has endeavored to establish its image as a premier cultural vacation destination for the well-to-do. Sadly, stamping David on the City Logo does not communicate “culture”. It displays an unfortunate absence of worldly perspective and plain bad marketing. ...

In a world where organizations succeed or fail on the strength of their brand, it is ever more important to have the right marketing strategy. This is particularly true in the case of Sarasota where the local economy is largely dependent on tourism.

If Sarasota wants to identify itself with a cultural symbol, it should do so with one that is singular to the city. All great cities have one. Sarasota does not need to label itself after a copy. It is an Original and it should be known around the world as such." 

Beyond the David issue, SarasotaDay set out nine other areas Sarasota needs to improve on for awesomeness:

• More public art
• Engage younger population to contribute ideas
• Work collaboratively across the city for solutions
• Demand property owners to make Main Street look more appealing
• Creative workforce housing
• Increase bandwidth capacity by installing needed fiber optic lines to encourage growth of technology companies
• Embrace the privately operated HuB to build companies, communities
• Increase downtown density limits to avoid millionaire housing
• Connect colleges with business community

What is your take on those ideas? Is Sarasota already awesome and it just needs to be more awesome, or is there a lot of work to do?