In November 2021, the City of Sarasota partnered with DreamLarge, the first registered benefit corporation on the Gulf Coast of Florida, to activate and engage with the public and better understand how the community sees Sarasota with the overall goal of redesigning the City’s seal and exploring ideas for its logo.
The design selection process included a range of community engagement efforts over a two-year period with a public branding survey which received over 2,600 responses, After an exhaustive exploration and development of numerous City logo concepts by DreamLarge, our final recommendation to City staff leading the project was to preserve the Statue of David while modernizing the existing logo to suit various departmental uses.
We felt that the Statue of David symbolized the City's spirit—standing as a "David" in the face of many "Goliaths." The statue's meaning is multifaceted, allowing for flexible interpretation across different city applications.
An additional adaptation was to use the arch behind David as an aperture to frame assets of our city, ultimately showcasing the best of what Sarasota is in a creative and adaptive manner for the community to engage with.
Given that none of our work was made public and recognizing the project transitioned to being led internally at the City by Ciera Coleman, we chose not to charge for any of the scope related to developing a new logo.
We remain confident in our April 2023 direction and have made our final recommendation public under our charter for public benefit.
April 2023 Logo Recommendation to City Staff
Adaptation for how the logo could be leveraged to brand the City of Sarasota…
If you’d like additional information about our process, ideas we developed or to use these logos please contact us at hello@dreamlarge.org
City of Sarasota - Seal
A public design contest garnered more than 172 submissions from 148 entries.
The top five seal designs were chosen by a panel of diverse community members and featured a number of local artists including Rachel Manzano, Cynthia Clasgens, Sarah Scire, Brooks Tracey, and Bill Greaves.
The final seal was a collaboration between DreamLarge and City of Sarasota resident Rachel Manzano, a talented local artist whose design was highly recognized by the City Commission.
Financial Disclosure
DreamLarge was paid a total of $12,500 by the City of Sarasota to lead this public engagement initiative and develop the final seal and associated brand standards over a 2-year period. From the $12,500, each of four of the finalists* were paid $1,000/each for their contributions, with Rachel Manzano receiving an additional $1,000 as the winner and for her collaboration toward the final seal. (Finalist Cynthia Clasgens felt it was not necessary to pay for her efforts and returned her check)