Morris City Council approves brand image

MORRIS – The Morris City Council on Monday night approved a brand image for the city and its organizations.

The image was presented to the council by Carl Wohlt of Wohltgroup, which was hired by the Morris Downtown Development Partnership to come up with the brand image. Theoretically, that image would be common among Morris retailers and associations. Wohltgroup previously has come up with logos and brands for communities including Lombard, Oak Forest and Mundelein.

The image displays a white block letter M underlined by a curved line to represent the Illinois River bridge on a background of four colors: gold, red, blue and green. Gold represents social connections, red represents the stars in the Chicago flag, blue represents the Illinois River and green represents the natural resources in and around Morris.

The City Council voted, 5-2, to approve the brand so that it could move forward and be taken to other taxing entities. Aldermen Dean Tambling and Alex Clubb voted against approving the brand.

“I don’t like the way it looks,” Clubb said. “It doesn’t look like someone spent more than 10 minutes on it. For our community to have such a nice downtown and everything else so nice, I just don’t like the way this looks.”

Tambling agreed with Clubb.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “It looks like a page out of a platbook filled with colors and an ‘M’ stuck on it. I think branding is a good idea, but I am not sure if this is the one we want.”

Julie Applegate of the Morris Downtown Development Partnership said one of the organization’s top priorities has been to come up with a brand Morris that would draw interest from outside the community, whether it be from people coming to visit or shop in town or from businesses looking to locate to Morris.

During the presentation, Wohlt said the project had two phases. The first phase involved doing research, conducting interviews and surveys, and peer reviews. The second phase was to develop the concepts gathered through the first phase.

“Some of the ideas we got from the first phase were connection, natural resources and that the people are friendly. We wanted to highlight the connection and closeness to Chicago, the natural resources such as the state parks and the Illinois River, and the spirit of cooperation in the town. The monogram symbol tells that story.”

Mayor Chris Brown said the vote meant that the project would move forward and the brand could be shown to other organizations.

“This was the first unveiling,” Brown said. “There is no financial commitment by the city at this point.”