Covering the world’s conurbations – Gothamist:
Gothamist is one of 11 blogs operated by the same company that cover 11 large cities of the world, many of them which qualify for conurbation status. These cities include London, New York and Austin. Gothamist focuses on the activities of New York. These activities range from the latest restaurant openings, concerts, politics, sports and every other interesting piece of news in the ‘The Big Apple’. Gothamist is the first of the 11 blogs to be created by co-founders Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung. They are also the publisher and editor of the blog respectively.
Gothamist is one of the few blogs that focus on certain cities and at the same time have received rave reviews from not only the locals but people worldwide. However, Gothamist’s strong position was under threat with the creation of numerous online guides such as CitySearch. The website and its sister blogs are owned by Gothamist LLC, after which its flagship blog was named.
New York’s very own – The Gothamist Logo:
Sam Parks is the man who is credited with the designing of the Gothamist logo, a brand that has endeared itself to the people of New York. Sam designed the logo in 2003. In the website’s own words this logo is “simple and elegant (but not in a fussy way).
The logo comprises of a series of tall buildings and sky scrapers, depicting the lifestyle of New York and the tall buildings that are associated with it. Beneath the logo, the word ‘gotham’ is written in bold while the suffix ‘ist’ is not. Though, it has not been mentioned per say by the blog itself, one cannot help but feel that the name is related to the fictional American city named Gotham made popular by the Batman comics. Like New York, Gotham City was also a center of tall buildings and a hub for finance. This relation to a popular fictional city gives the blog a homely feel as many of the readers feel a certain connection between the blog and the clever reference to the popular movie.
It is also interesting to note that it’s sister blogs have their own unique logo albeit they follow the same theme that is of buildings that are unique to their country of expertise. For example, Shangaist, the blog covering the city of Shangai has a logo that represents buildings reminiscent of Chinese culture and infrastructure. The same holds true for Austin, Washington D.C or London.
What makes the Gothamist logo special?
Since its inception in 2003, the blog has earned the right to be called New York’s very own by many people. Its logo is special to the people of NY not just because of the Gotham reference but also because of its design, which as mentioned before, depict the infrastructure that is typical of the Big Apple. The logo has become a famous brand over the years as the blog collected one award after the other. To date, Gothamist has six ‘bloggies’ nominations, title of ‘Forbes Favourite’ and the ‘Best of the Web’ award by Business Week. It also received a Wired Rave Award from the Wired magazine.
The logo can be seen on various merchandise and has become a symbol for all things New York. It averages 65,000 whopping visitors everyday and has a seen an exponential increase in traffic in the past six months. It is for this reason that New York Times nominated it for the best NY blog and voted best NY blog by the NY press readers in 2004.
The essence of its logo is best described by Forbes description of the blog which states that the blog is a,
“Sophisticated, deliciously urbane city blog”.
