Does Brooklyn Need An Official Visual Identity? idBrooklyn Thinks So.

At first the thought of creating a unified visual identity for Brooklyn sounded to me like a great excuse for gang colors. Then I realized idBrooklyn just wants to make an icon set for the borough, not unlike the kind I would download to personalize my Windows desktop in the late 90’s. Oh well. Here’s what idBrooklyn is all about in their own words:

idBrooklyn is a large-scale design project aimed at creating the graphic identity of Brooklyn through your participation. Simply put - we want to involve Brooklynites and Brooklyn-lovers worldwide to participate in designing a beautiful set of graphic icons of Brooklyn's culture.

They plan on publishing the final set in a book as well as t-shirts, posters, postcards and probably any other kind of tchotchke you can image. The minimalist images are just short of ironic but close enough that they can be enjoyed by hipsters, graphic designers, breeders and middle aged brownstone owners. They’ve even managed to gentrify 90’s Spike Lee enough that a white dude with a curly mustache feels empowered enough to wear the filmmaker’s likeness on a v-neck t-shirt.

With 19 days to go, the campaign has only raised $2,675 of it’s $30,000 goal. That’s not instilling a lot of confidence. Perhaps it has something to do with the inherent contradiction of celebrating creative diversity by making everything look like part of the same set?

But if you want to help or learn more, far be it from me to deny you the opportunity. Check out their campaign page here.