All good brands need a logo. Commercial companies, fashion labels, events, rock bands and yes, even cities.

Kyiv is no exception, and throughout history the city has been represented by various coat of arms, with the current design depicting the Archangel Michael.

Kyiv's coat of arms

However, it seems that coat of arms are currently ‘out of fashion’ and funky logos are ‘in’, and on 6th March voting ended on a colourful competition to find a new Kyiv logo.

The finalists’ designs were displayed online and voting was thrown open to the public.

The winner, with 9129 votes, was: Kyiv – the city where it all starts

The logo consists of four characters-legends and slogans. The water drop symbolizes the river Dnieper, a chestnut symbolizes the cities parks,  the dome symbolizes the temples of the capital and the heart is a symbol of  Kyiv as a city of love and goodness and resembles the wings of the Archangel Mikhail.

With the winner announced, it was time to promote the new logo and familiarise Kyivians with their new symbol…

Kyiv new logo from fedoriv.com on Vimeo.

I kinda like the new logo and anything that helps promote Kyiv in a positive light is a good thing, however the final design wasn’t my favourite. I guess that’s why I’m not a designer.

Here are the other, unsuccessful entrants:

The City of Kyiv logo from Viktor Konovalov on Vimeo.

My favourite

This last one is a little over-confident for me, but congratulations to all of those who made the finals. I’m amazed that none of them feature Taras Shevchenko!

Here’s a few more logos you’ll see in Ukraine this year.

Logo for the Olympic Stadium in Kyiv

The inescapable EURO 2012 logo

Lviv's city logo

Bez GMO (without GMO). New (and rather stupid) rules mean ALL products without GMO ingredients should have this logo. You’ll find it everywhere :))