A new logo for the World Trade Center was revealed on Wednesday along a construction fence in New York City and it valiantly tries to fit in as many references as the human eye can handle.
Created by the firm Landor Associates, the new logo is part of a $3.57 million branding venture. The logo is an abstract trident, featuring two rectangular bars on the base and three bars on top.
The meaning behind the ambiguous World Trade Center logo seems to be open for interpretation.
Each one of the five bars could symbolize the five towers: the finished and open 7 World Trade Center, the almost completed 1 and 4 World Trade Center, the under construction 3 World Trade Center, and 2 World Trade Center, which is still being conceptualized.
"The logo acts as an icon for the whole physical space of the 16 acres," said Erica Dumas, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site.
The top bars of the logo are designed with a slant, which is exactly at a 17.76-degree angle, symbolizing 1 World Trade Center's 1,776-foot height.
The logo as a whole makes a W, representing both the World Trade Center and the Westfield World Trade Center, the shopping center that will open next year.
If you look close enough, you can see the shadows of the Twin Towers. The empty space created in between columns in the top half represent the Tribute in Light (the memorial beacons of light). And the two bottom bars represents the twin pools of the National September 11 Memorial.
The previous logo of the World Trade Center was pinstriped towers that emerged from what looks like a representation of the yin and yang symbol.
Designing a logo that incorporates the site's competing interests, commemorates a tragic past and looks towards the future is a tough challenge. Perhaps this is why the design is so vague. The problem with all this ambiguity is whether people will take the time to figure out what the trident actually stands for.
