View from the North 40: Color me genius

I don’t know why I’m the one who always has to come up with the solutions to society’s big problems, but here I am shouldering the responsibility again. This time, though, I’m looking to get paid for my genius.

After nearly a year of work, just under $300,000 of donor funding spent on creating a new logo for the Montana State Library and an hour-and-a-half of discussion, the library’s commission is now at an impasse over whether the logo aptly portrays the state library’s mission or if it’s a spark that will set off a “firestorm” of Pride-ful controversy.

Montana Free Press reported June 20 that the logo, designed by Milwaukee-based Hoffman York, was revealed at the commission’s June 15 meeting. The current logo is a blue and white hexagon that forms a stylized image of stacked books. The proposed logo retains the hexagon and predominant blue and white elements, but adds two extra shades of blue plus green, yellow and orange all in triangular shapes representing rays of light shining from a prism.

The rays of colored light are a metaphor for the Montana State Library, which manages a variety of state records and information systems.

“People really liked (the new logo) for the way that it provided clarity,” Hoffman York representative Addie Palin told the commissioners. “How the prism, like the library, is a vehicle for distributing information in a new and different way.”

But commissioner Tammy Hall, who was attending her first meeting after being appointed March 28 by Gov. Greg Gianforte for a term that ends June 30, was having none of this prism business.

“That is going to represent, from now on, what people see for us. I think a rainbow as to what we’re doing in the library is going to set off a firestorm,” she said, in reference to how the addition of green, yellow and orange triangles makes the logo look like the 11-color pride flag.

“I do have to agree with the rainbow,” said commissioner Robyn Scribner, who went on to say she had nothing against the Pride flag.

Library commissioner and Superintendent of Public Instruction since 2017 Elsie Arntzen also didn’t like the rebranding attempt, Montana Free Press reported. She didn’t mention the Pride flag likeness, but rather questioned the effectiveness of the logo as a whole, comparing it unfavorably to the branding power of McDonald’s fast-food chain’s famous “M.”

“Will this be able to grow like those great golden arches and everybody can get a hamburger? I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Arntzen said “I don’t know” twice, people, so we know this logo-issue is serious stuff — which will likely have double billing at the top of the list of all the things Arntzen does not know about.

Well this is what I know, folks.

First, that hexagon they’re all clinging to is sketchy.

Sure the six-sided shape is popular among the nuts and bolts crowd, but the hexagon is the center of the hexagram, which is the six-pointed star most notably linked with Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and other India-Indian religions, as well as Islam, shamanic teachings and the occult. To make matters weirder, it has strong connections to mathematics and science used in schools today, though no one has proposed legislation to burn these texts yet.

And — and — quilters have been known to incorporate both the hexagon and hexagram in their quilted blankets that people sleep under all the time. Is that a false sense of security we get when cuddled into one of those quilts? Think about that for a minute.

Second, I cannot believe that the commissioners were OK with three shades of blue in the proposed logo. This loading of blue appears to represent various types of Democrats, thus, without equal display of red, the logo essentially excludes all Republicans from representation.

As MFP reported: “You’re representing Montana, and if you put out a brand-new logo that used to be a certain color and all of a sudden it’s that,” Hall said, referencing the new logo, “you are setting us up for a very unnecessary battle politically” — because the library commission and staff will be advocating for funding during the upcoming legislative session.

What do we do now?

Red and blue are two colors in the rainbow co-opted for the Pride flag, which also includes black, brown, light blue, pink and white, so all of those colors are dead to the library. And my research shows the asexual crowd threw a gray stripe into their flag. So it would seem all hope is lost.

But not when I’m on the case.

When all hope is lost in America, we default to our Founding Fathers, and if all things white, including our stars, almost half the stripes, those old-timey wigs and our eagle’s head, were good enough for them, that’s good enough for us.

Keep that weirdly unexplained hexagon, keep the prism of enlightenment, nestle them next to the Montana State Library name — just make it all pure white — white on white on white with white. Problem solved.

I’ll take my $300,000 in check or cash. Please and thank you.

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If anyone wants to give me a pat on the back, I’d take that too at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .