DON'T MESS WITH COLORADO
It's always dangerous to fiddle with a classic, as Colorado's Office of Economic Development and International Trade learned the hard way in December. Since 1950, highway travelers have been greeted by a frontier-style welcome sign just inside Colorado's border. But the office's two-year-old Advancing Colorado business-tourism campaign, which advanced its slogan and colors (red and blue) on hoodies and T-shirts without making waves, courted disaster when it floated the idea of replacing the highway signs with a bland redesign.
After the Rocky Mountain News raised the alarm in late December, Jenny Shank, contributor to online community network New West, summed up many locals' sentiments about the proposed sign's generic look: “Maybe we should just…rechristen our state Wal-Mart-Landia.” Brian Vogt, director of the OEDIT, acknowledges the misstep but isn't backing down so easily: “ Is there a rugged Western look that will honor the past and bring it into the future? I think so. We hope to find something better than we've ever dreamed up.”
—Jude Stewart for Print, March/April 2006
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