Moscow Does Not Believe in Rebranding

I have a great passion for city branding. It's maybe the biggest realistic project for a subject like rebranding. A country is already too big to be summarized, but a city is big enough to give you the chance to come up with something memorable, but true and reality fitted.

Walking the internet I found an article in The Moscow News about Moscow's rebranding and the public talk of the proposals. First I will describe the options and then I will go personal and talk about how I saw Moscow myself.

1.

This is a very noisy logo. But I can see it fit in the Moscow reality in the next cases:
1. The contrast. I think society, people, everything there is guided by this oscillation. From very high to very low.
2. I see buildings. I also see a representation of earthquakes. The best part is that Moscow doesn't know what that means, that's why they have very tall buildings. This image is a good representation of the architecture in Moscow.
3. And then, above all, you have the red star. Nothing left to say here. Very reality like. (I'm not sure if it's very smart choice, but it's definitely a real one)
4. And of course the M from Moscow, and possible the W in the end also.
5. A reasonable use would be if you try to adapt this image to a map, to make the end of each peak a place you should go and visit.

Conclusion: this could be a representative shape for Moscow, but it's hard to see the meanings without a deeper research. Imagine this in graffiti hands.

2.
At first I thought it was a pretty simple design and totally out of context. Who can say he went to Moscow and was hugged by people on the streets? I didn't think so too. But after reading the hole proposal I could understand more of it. Besides the hug that I don't agree (but I could accept it like a wishful thinking), there are 2 other symbols integrated in it that I would like to talk about:
1. There is the round circle. And that is exactly how Moscow looks like. If Saint Petersburg is the by default the square city (all the streets are parallel and perpendicular) Moscow is the city of concentric circles. You can see it on every map, probably the circles of the city growth.
2. The second meaning I was happy to see is the hand shake. They are business people. That was my feeling all the time I was there. The cars, the streets, the attitude, everything about them was yelling - we want to make business, we want to make money. That's why I think that business tourism is more important for them than just tourism and cheeseing for pictures.
Conclusion: I don't think it's healthy to advertise a city like Moscow as friendly, because people will go there and there will be no one speaking English in the streets or at the market, nevertheless hug. But the logo has potential in all the derivation of the business growth.
Oh, and another interesting thing about this proposal was to add a "W" at the end of words and it would rime with Moscow:

3.
This is obviously M for Moscow, but that's about it. It has a lot of usage. The biggest advantage of this is that it can "grow" into almost anything. But i personally don't like it. It's not that I don't like it, it's not much to like. For me this is just a font that would go with all the branding materials.

4.

This is the sophisticated one. For me it looks like a brain. If we go down this path we might get caught in the deepness of the neurons. I think it is a representations of the city map. Maybe the correct way to say it is a brutal representation of the city, even organic. And this brings the "puzzle like" feeling about the city.

Another aspect of this design is that it's very fashionable. A topic very close to Moscow's hearth.
And I can see in the center on the draw a hand holding a hearth. I don't know if this was designed to be there, or it's just the coincidence on shapes, but it's welcomed.

5.


This could be the WWW and the McDonald's of the cities. What it actually is, that's another story. It's a Mmmmm. Do you know what that is? Neither do I, but I can guess is the process you get hungry. And it's in a shape of a smile. So smile, you're on candid camera.

6.
This logo is an invitation to talk about Moscow's problem and possible solutions. It's more an intern statement that a saleable product. I don't think that as a tourist this can speak to me.


And in the end I will write about my view of the city after a visit there. I will start by listing words that come in my mind when thinking of Moscow: round, tall, art and cultural capital, subway, deep undergrounds, fashion, expensive.
Round because all the city and then the subway is build in concentric circles.

Tall because the buildings are very tall. This is the first thing I saw when I arrived in Moscow:

Art and cultural. I guess I don't need to explain this. It's obvious we are talking about Moscow. I'm just going to share something that impressed me. This are real paintings in a real subway in a normal day:
And the subway. It's spectacular for 2 reasons. First of all they are very deep, you go down on the stairs minutes to get to the station. And there are the stations. To describe them I would say busy museums.
To sum up all I've said, I can see Moscow in 2 different pictures. The first one resembles the first logo proposal with ups and downs only I would symbolize also the ground in the middle, i would make it less rough. The ups should be the buildings and the downs should be the deep subways. But this is purely a draw on a section. It could go as far as be the hearth beat of the city.

The second view i have over Moscow is as an "opened museum" or "outdoor museum" if you prefer.

I guess all it's left to do now is for you to go there and see for yourself. Maybe they will have soon a city-brand to attract you to go there.