The creation of a tourism brand

It should be no secret by now, assuming you've read the rest of the blog. Tourist visits to Cape Verde have been growing at double digit pace over the last decade. In 2010, over 400,000 visitors came to Cape Verde for a vacation, primarily from Europe.

Cape Verde has even been highlighted in Conde Naste Traveler, USA Today Travel, Lonely Planet and other travel magazines as a desirable vacation destination. Lonely Planet, a British publication, awarded Cape Verde the number 3 spot on its Best in Travel 2011 guide. And the French association of tour operators, CETO, indicated that the number of French visitors to Cape Verde doubled in the winter period 2010-2011.

Cape Verde is building its brand. And every brand needs an official logo. So a competition was held from March 25 to May 7 in 2010. There were 151 competitive entries and the image you see at the head of this article was the winning entry. The winning logo was created by Rafael Fernandes, a professional architect, who practices his trade on the island of Santiago.

What was most interesting to me was Fernandes' origin for the concept of the logo. Refer to the picture on the right. You will see that the graphic that occurs at the bottom of the logo refers to the ten islands in the archipelago, each island represented by a stone whose shape mimics the actual shape of the island. It's a pretty powerful connection to all of the islands especially from an environmental standpoint.

While the logo is flexible and can be transformed into other color interpretations as well as other graphical renditions, the logo has met mixed reviews.

What do you think of the logo?