Next Thursday (12.08.10) marks the beginning of the International Year of Youth. In order to commemorate this event, the United Nations Programme on Youth of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) has released this logo design:
The International Year of Youth is a year focused on the encouragement and promotion of youth involvement in both society and the government. Nicola Shepherd, the UN Focal Point on Youth, describes the International Year of Youth as being “about advancing the full and effective participation of youth in all aspects of society. We encourage all sectors of society to work in partnership with youth and youth organizations to better understand their needs and concerns and to recognize the contributions that they can make to society.”
The International Year of Youth's logo design is also available in these 5 languages:
I love this logo design. I love its simplicity. I love its colours. I love its boldness and I love its playfulness. I love that it uses many different coloured speech bubbles to symbolize the communication of youth from around the globe and I think that it is an accurate interpretation of the year’s theme, ‘Dialogue and Mutual Understanding’. I think that this logo design is both powerful and easily recognizable and I think that it will clearly stand out in the minds of today’s youth.
I also think that this logo design lends itself very well to the whole concept behind this year: the global encouragement of youth initiatives and involvement around the world. The word government is often synonymous with conservative values, boredom and lack of creativity in young people's minds. I think that this logo design will help to break these stereotypes in their minds and thus, it has the potential of actually succeeding at capturing the attention of today’s youth.
I also think that this logo design will look fantastic on all of the marketing materials created in order to promote this year. One could really have fun with this logo design when printing it on t-shirt designs as well as brochures, business cards and stationery that will be used across the globe this year. I really hope that they put in that little extra effort to use this logo design in innovative and youthful ways.
The only part of this logo design that I don’t like is how they chose to highlight the work ‘of’ in red. I don’t why they emphasized this word. It makes a little more sense in the Chinese, Arabic and Russian logo designs where they highlight the date however, why didn’t they also do that in the French, English and Spanish versions. Instead, they chose to highlight the word ‘of’. Bizarre.
Interestingly enough, when the DESA was searching for a slogan for this event, they used Facebook to reach out to and ask for suggestions from youth around the world. Nearly 500 suggestions later and they came up with this official slogan ‘Our Year. Our Voice.’ I think that this was a great initiative on the part of the DESA to make use of a modern medium to communicate with today’s youth, get their opinions and involve them in the creation process.
If you want to learn more about the International Year of the Youth, join their Facebook group here.