The logo that is to relaunch tourism in Italy and double the gross domestic product in four years has been revealed on Italian TV two nights ago. Here it is.

Berlusconi (now better known as “Papi” after the latest scandal) apparently oversaw its design himself, and due to the complete lack of consultation with design schools and focus groups more than one accredited newspaper, blog, and facebook post has wondered if it was put together by his 18-year old “friend” Noemi. Needless to say it’s a tragedy in the application of photoshop filters that recalls late night home shopping networks and it has already been slammed by Social Design Zine and others, with a Facebook Group against it that counts 139 members in less than two days (correction: in the 20 minutes it took me to write this post, the group has grown to 191).

The horrendous logo has been entirely accurately analysed as having “no structure, no status, no dignified branding; it seems hardly applicable in any situation at all, and has no symbolic or narrative background” (my translation, Social Design Zine).

This design disaster comes just a bit more than a year after the launch of the “tourism internet portal” www.italia.it (if you click that you get an error message!) that received so many nasty comments it had to shut down in January 2008 after a short life and long budget (7 million euros!).

Why can’t the italian government:

• Use the wonderful resources of its people to design, at low cost, a logo and website?
• Figure out what image reflects this wonderful country?
• Understand what people actually like about this place and promote it?

HELP BERLUSCONI (he needs it): If you could design a logo for italy, what would it look like? Write your ideas or email them to me and I’ll post them here!!

UPDATE (25/06/09): the government had to heed to criticism online and has now come up with a new logo that is… not much better!!