On September 4, 2025, Austin city officials pulled back the curtain on a project seven years in the making: the unveiling of the city’s first-ever unified brand logo. The new emblem, a wavy blue and green “A,” was designed to symbolize Austin’s rolling hills, winding rivers, and iconic bridges. But instead of a chorus of civic pride, the $1.1 million rebrand has triggered a rare moment of bipartisan outrage, with residents and politicians from all corners of the city’s political spectrum finding common ground—if only in their collective frustration.
The rebranding effort, which traces its origins to a 2018 City Council vote to create a “consistent and clear brand” for all city departments, was meant to streamline Austin’s public image. According to Jessica King, Austin’s Chief Communications Director, “The logo itself reflects the hills, rivers, and bridges that serve to connect us to one another. The colors were inspired by our surrounding environment—violet crown skies and the green canopies of our parks and trails.” The intent, city officials say, was to craft a symbol that would unify the city’s more than 300 disparate departmental logos and help residents easily identify city workers, facilities, and services.
City Manager T.C. Broadnax, who previously served as Dallas City Manager, defended the initiative. “For the first time in Austin’s history, we will have a logo to represent the city services and unify us as one organization, one Austin,” he said in a statement. Broadnax emphasized that the logo rollout, which begins October 1, 2025, would start with digital assets—such as the city’s website, social media accounts, and newsletters—before gradually transitioning physical assets like uniforms, vehicles, and signage “to minimize impact on the City budget.” City spokeswoman Mimi Cardenas echoed this approach, noting, “The City is taking a fiscally responsible approach to the transition process. This change will occur over the course of several years to minimize impact to the City’s budget. A total cost has not yet been determined.”
But the public’s reaction was swift and, in many cases, scathing. Residents took to social media to roast the new design, with one telling KXAN, “The new logo sucks. It looks like a homeless tent.” Others likened it to a math textbook publisher’s logo or described it as “a bad biotech company rebranding.” The criticisms didn’t stop at aesthetics. Many Austinites questioned the timing and priorities behind the expensive project, especially as the city faces rising crime, a looming property tax hike, and record levels of homelessness.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Tex., was among the most vocal critics, blasting the project during an appearance on The Will Cain Show. “We have people in Austin who don’t get their 911 calls answered. You have people that have seen an increase in crime in Austin because they were going after, gutting and cutting the police force,” he said. Roy accused city leaders of prioritizing symbolism over public safety, adding, “They want to go spend a million dollars on a rebrand, get rid of a cross and make it some sort of, you know, a woke-looking band emblem.”
The backlash crossed party lines, with local attorney Adam Loewy telling the Daily Mail, “I have rarely seen Republicans and Democrats united on any issue quite like this, but there is outright condemnation of this logo because the logo stinks.” Loewy even urged city leaders to “pull a Cracker Barrel,” referencing the restaurant chain’s swift reversal on its own rebrand earlier this year after public outcry. The sense of unity among the city’s often fractious political factions is, as the International Business Times put it, “rare bipartisan outrage.”
The timing of the rebrand has only added fuel to the fire. Just weeks before the logo’s unveiling, Austin’s City Council approved a $6.3 billion budget that included a 4% pay raise for city employees but warned homeowners of potential property tax hikes in November—hikes that could raise annual bills by an average of $300, according to KUT. Meanwhile, the city remains short around 300 police officers and has earmarked $101 million to tackle homelessness in 2025. Critics have argued that the logo project sends the wrong message about city priorities, especially during what the American-Statesman described as a “historic budget crunch.”
Transparency, or the lack thereof, became another flashpoint. While city officials claim the new brand was shaped by feedback from a diverse cross-section of community members and city employees, many residents said they were left out of the process. No public meetings were held to debate the design, and only a handful of residents were selectively polled. The New York Post highlighted the criticism over this opaque process, noting that the secrecy only deepened suspicions about how the $1.1 million was spent.
Designer DJ Stout of Pentagram, the Austin-based firm behind the logo, admitted to Fox News that the process was “the ultimate design by committee,” and acknowledged Austin’s “little liberal island, politically.” Stout said he wasn’t surprised by the public reaction, explaining that simplicity is crucial for logos to hold up in digital formats. Marketing professor Chris Aarons told KXAN, “As long as it’s clean and memorable and simple and eye-catching, it does its job.” Still, as Dallas City Councilwoman and UT graduate Cara Mendelsohn pointed out to NBC 5, “There’s something really special about Austin. I’m not sure the logo captures it.”
The similarities between Austin’s new logo and the long-standing Dallas city logo did not go unnoticed. Mendelsohn and others noted that both logos share a minimalist, stylized letter and earthy color palette, though the exact shades differ. The fact that Broadnax, who championed the Austin rebrand, previously managed Dallas only heightened the sense of déjà vu for some observers.
Budget documents reveal just how the $1,117,558 was allocated: $200,000 for design, $640,000 for vendors, $115,000 for public awareness campaigns, $75,582 for citywide design software, $100,000 for foundational materials, and $186,976 for salaries and benefits for support staff and legal counsel. The rollout of the logo will begin digitally on October 1, 2025, and is expected to take up to a decade for full implementation. Police and fire uniforms will remain unchanged to avoid unnecessary costs, but officials admit that millions more will eventually be spent updating signage, stationery, and staff gear.
For some, the new logo is a welcome modernization. A few defenders have praised its minimalist look and the effort to unify the city’s image. “The Coca Cola was just a script, but it’s a beautiful script. But over 120 years, they made it mean happiness. It is really what the entity makes that logo mean at the end of the day,” Aarons noted, suggesting that the true value of a logo comes from the meaning the city builds around it over time.
Yet, for many Austinites, the green-and-blue “A” now stands less for rivers and hills and more for anger and alienation. As one resident told local media, “It’s not just about the money. We’re being asked to pay higher taxes, we don’t feel safe, and homelessness is everywhere, and the city thinks what we need most is a new logo.” The emblem, meant to unify, has instead become a lightning rod—an unlikely symbol of rare consensus in a famously divided city.
In the end, the story of Austin’s new logo is not just about design, but about who gets to decide what a city stands for, and when. For now, the debate rages on, with the “A” at its center—a mark that, for better or worse, everyone seems to recognize.
