Visual Identity Project
On 24 October 2022, Horsham Rural City Council approved a plan to introduce a new visual identity for the municipality across the next two years.
Why was a new visual identity needed?
The purple and green logo featuring Mount Arapiles had served the organisation well since 2008, but it was time for Council to move forward, refresh and modernise its corporate identity.
What does this mean for Horsham?
This new branding has improved our image, given us focus and opened up a new way forward in promoting our municipality as an attractive place to live, work and invest. It's about creating a new vision and key messages to communicate to visitors, families and industries to bring them to Horsham. The new branding appears on locality council signs, building signs, websites, and all external correspondence.
How was the new design developed?
The design has evolved from the welcome sculpture recently installed near Sawyer Park. The Community Vision themes including the four pillars of sustainability, liveability, accessibility and community was the inspiration for the new sculpture, the new Western Highway entrance signs and now the new logo.
This is more than a logo, its iconic values are aligned to the things that set the Horsham municipality apart from other regions - our geology, agriculture, waterways and soils. The design expresses the way Horsham values its people and connection to the land. Themes of water, layers of woven landscape, light and shade, people, activity and movement. The shapes incorporate iconic Wimmera aspects such as reeds, crops and yabbies and the typography is inspired by stencilling on historic landmarks in the city and the lettering used on wool bales. The design is distinctive and creates a meaningful and long term legacy for the organisation and the community.
Mayor Gulline said “As a Councillor group we were very impressed with this (design) work, and we requested to have the designs adopted as our municipality-wide identity”
How much is the new visual identity costing?
The project is being funded across the next two financial years, with $287,000 to come from external Grants Commission funding in 2022-2023 and a further $500,600 allocated from the long term capital plan (brought forward one year to 2023-24). A large component of this expenditure ($488,000) is part of Council’s normal budget allocation relating to corporate identity (focused on signage replacement).
The funding of the re-branding did not impact in any way the committed budget for roads and other core services in the 2022/2023 budget.
When was the new branding rolled out?
During March 2023, the switch to the new brand started with digital assets, fleet livery and internal signage changed over.
New entrance signs were also erected at both Western Highway entrances to the city.
The full changeover, including road and other outdoor signage, will happen over the 2022-23 and 2023-24 financial years.
Horsham_Brand_presentation.pdf(PDF, 26MB)