Why I don’t love ‘We Love NYC’

By Drew Letendre

© Copyright Drew Letendre, 2023

It is the better part of valor, love (and self-preservation) not to throw stones at the glass offices of professional neighbors, but the ill-conceived ‘2.0’ version

of the classic ‘I Love NY’ brand, may deserve the pile-on it’s getting.  And,

well, why not one more?

I don’t know who decided, and based on what burning needs, that it was a good idea to improve a veritable icon. Though it offends against the

sometimes rampant and reckless imperative to innovate on everything, some

cultural artifacts--dare I say it? --are just sacrosanct. ‘I Love NY’ may count as

one of them. The appearance of ‘We Love NYC’ arrives as unwelcome as a

posthumous sequel to ‘Citizen Kane’ or an addition to the Chrysler Building.

The old adage about leaving well-enough alone, has garnered yet another

confirmation.

The busybodies mucked around at the bookends of the original artifact--

pluralizing the initial pronoun (Why? Who are ‘We’?) and spelling out

pedantically with a capital ‘C’ what was more powerfully expressed by its

omission: namely that by ‘New York’ ‘we’ mean ‘New York City.’ Was this ever

in doubt? Did some marketing whiz kid compile data to the effect that the

audience misunderstood this as a campaign for New York State, deployed

from Albany? Let’s face it: some people just can’t leave anything alone. Did it

never occur to the authors that an individual person wearing a t-shirt that

declares ‘We Love NYC’ might look, well, ‘half there’ or like someone creating

even more problems in the already-troubled domain of pronouns?

One ‘justification’ for the graphic architecture of the new brand mark is that it

takes its cue from classic MTA subway signage. Sorry. The all-uppercase

rendering subverts that reading, in spite of the similar horizontal framing and

the observance of Helvetica. That might’ve actually been a ‘nice’ touch on an

otherwise ill-conceived, ill-considered reboot. As for the heart icon, it has all

the graphic elegance of a visual artifact from a PowerPoint menu or the

emoticons on your ‘wePhone’ or public domain stock. They could have at

least nested a ‘5’ within it (to signify the boroughs), like the colored circles that

indicate the subway lines. Nobody asked me.

All of these particulars aside, the question remains: what prompted this

creation? What deep boredom gave rise to this failed graffiti? I love New York.

And I’m sure ‘We’ (whoever ‘we’ are) love it too. And because we love it, we

didn’t need the ‘C’ to remind--let alone inform--us that the referent is the city. I

suppose T-Shirt and bumper sticker sales will deliver the ultimate verdict on

the reception of this unintentionally (?) iconoclastic riff on a universally

beloved paean to one of the great cities of the world.

But it begs the question: what next? ‘Got Milk?’ That’s been raked over the

coals. How about, ‘Think differently’ (righting decades of bad grammar) or

‘Just do something (for crying out loud)’ or ‘The Globe On Time’? 'We love

NYC' arrives looking more like bad editing than creative improvisation-- like

the unending parade of Marvel and DC Comics reboot movies, exhausting the

endless possibilities of CGI, long past exhausting their subject. 

Time for something original--again.