Apparently not having learned anything from Cracker Barrel’s debacle, the city of Austin, Texas has gone ahead and released a logo that looks like a rough draft of the livery on a 1970s-era regional airline. Money well spent, y’all!
At least it was reportedly only a $200,000 part of a $1.1 million rebrand, although that money could have been spent on practically anything else — including subsidizing Seth Rogen’s marijuana intake — and it would have been a better investment.
And the genesis of it seems based in a sort of wokeness, because of course it is.
Naturally, the spin was different from Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax as he unveiled it on Thursday morning.
“For the first time in Austin’s history, we will have a logo to represent the city services and unify us as one organization, one Austin,” he said, according to KXAN-TV.
Broadmax said the rebranding began before his arrival, but it was something he was “glad to champion” since “there is a very real business need for a unified brand.”
“The city will be getting a new look,” he said.
Except that the city had a seal it could already use, which looked perfectly fine. Instead, it now gets ’70s-tastic airliner logo to unify the city’s brand.
No, this is not satire. This is a real video of the city of Austin proudly unveiling a $1.1 million rebrand. pic.twitter.com/ipCL5DTn32
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) September 5, 2025
Broadnax went on to say that there were over 300 logos for the different Austin departments and that members of the Austin community didn’t recognize or love the city seal.
“We want our community members to be able to identify members of our team as city of Austin employees and trust the services we provide, whether they see the brand on a website, a utility bill, a street sign or the side of a vehicle, they’ll know exactly who it’s from and what it stands for,” Broadnax said, according to KXAN.
“Austinites told us that they value and appreciate their interaction with city staff, but they also want a modern government that reflects the community’s values and is consistent, connected and responsive across departments and services, and that’s what this brand does.”
Or, at least it did before Thursday, when everyone seemed united in calling the new logo what it is: Dumb.
Is this a major downgrade for Austin?
One social media user compared it to the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain’s disastrous decision to revamp its logo and remodel its location interiors. The comparison was not complimentary.
“Worse than Cracker Barrel,” the user wrote.
Worse than Cracker Barrel
— Peter B (@realpeteyb123) September 5, 2025
And, as you can guess, there’s a wokeness quotient involved here: After all, the Austin city seal celebrates both the Christian cross, the family crest of “Father of Texas” Stephen F. Austin (the city’s namesake), and the institutions of higher learning in the city when they were indeed involved in actually making sure students engaged in learning of a higher sort:
In the old seal you see a cross with wings. This is the crest of the father of Texas Stephen F Austin. The cross a nod to his family’s historic role in the crusades, the wings a nod to St. Austin. Behind the crest the state capitol, nodding to the city of Austin’s status in… https://t.co/oPe1cwA1Mb
— memetic_sisyphus (@memeticsisyphus) September 5, 2025
Critics are demanding a reset. After all, Cracker Barrel changed course in the face of public ridicule. Austin — a Democratic city that’s usually among blue dots on the overwhelmingly red election map of Texas — can do the same.
It’s enough that at least one former city council member is calling for the rebrand to halt.
Mackenzie Kelly, who served Austin’s District 6 until losing a re-election bid last year, started a petition on Change.org that already has over a thousand signatures in less than a day.
As a lifelong Austinite and former City Council Member, I believe our identity should reflect our voices.
I started this petition because $1.1M on a logo without public input isn’t right.
✍️ Sign and share to demand a say:
🔗 https://t.co/A4z9c5A7LfPlease sign & share. Let’s… pic.twitter.com/rKOGx5iqTF
— Mackenzie Kelly (@mkelly007) September 5, 2025
“As a lifelong Austinite and former City Council Member, I believe our identity should reflect our voices. I started this petition because $1.1M on a logo without public input isn’t right,” she wrote in a post published Friday on the social media platform X.
According to KXAS-TV, the company that created the new logo said it represents “the City’s iconic greenbelts and violet crown sunsets.”
Because there’s nothing that says “staying in touch with your roots” like de-emphasizing things that are specific about the city and emphasizing things that are pretty common in virtually every American suburb of a certain size that isn’t in a desert: Parks and sunsets.
While this isn’t exactly the kind of DEI-tastic stuff usually involved in wokeness, it still bears trace elements of it — specifically, erasure of the religious beliefs and personalities of the past in favor of a bland MegaCorp Inc.™-style logo that says nothing about the city aside from the fact that it won’t embrace its history and needed to pay a better graphic artist.
Then again, there’s nothing that says DEI like exalting participation trophies, too, which are the only awards this rebrand will win.
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