The new image of Madrid City Council, its presentation and its mistakes

A few days ago, the Madrid City Council unexpectedly unveiled its new image, or rather, just its new logo.

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The unveiling took place without any prior announcement during the city's Christmas lights switch-on ceremony on Saturday, November 22nd. The new logo was simply displayed on the lectern without any prior mention. The following day, the official Madrid City Council Twitter account included the new logo at the end of the video they posted about the lighting ceremony.

🎄Noche mágica en Madrid con el encendido de las luces de Navidad

💫Los asistentes pudieron disfrutar de actuaciones, un videomapping y fuegos artificiales en un encendido a cargo de @AlmeidaPP_ y @CSainz_oficial

📹¡Te lo mostramos en el vídeo!#MadridEnciendeLaNavidad pic.twitter.com/stDiNwbUmD

— Ayuntamiento Madrid (@MADRID) November 23, 2025

I've been working as a graphic designer for over 20 years, and I never imagined that the new image of a major city like Madrid would be unveiled this way. Designing a city's corporate image is a long, difficult, and delicate process. After all, we're talking about a symbol that represents a large community of people. It doesn't have the institutional importance of a flag or an official coat of arms, but it comes close, since nowadays logos have as much or even more presence than traditional official symbols.

Can you imagine Madrid unveiling a new flag at the Christmas lights switch-on ceremony, without any prior announcement? The comparison might seem exaggerated, but something like that is what happened on Saturday. In the last few hours, we've learned—because the Madrid City Council told the media—that the new image had "zero cost" because it was designed by the City Council's General Directorate of Communication, a misleading statement. Do the employees of the General Directorate of Communication get paid for their work? If so (it's obvious they're civil servants who aren't working for free), the new image didn't have "zero cost": it simply wasn't created by a design studio.

According to Telemadrid, the design of the new logo has taken two years to complete. Two years in which the mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, didn't even announce that the redesign was underway. It's amusing to see that the City Council is now invoking "modern communication demands" to justify it, because one of those demands, in a democracy, is transparency in the work of public administrations.

Regarding the new logo, I regret to inform you that it is not yet featured on the Madrid City Council's corporate identity website. The one currently available there is the one in use until now, introduced in 2003. The latest version of its corporate identity manual is from 2024. The logo in use until now (below) was based on the heraldic shield of the city of Madrid, respecting its elements but using only two colors: white and blue. It was a very appropriate heraldic logo.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the new image. The border with the seven six-pointed stars disappears. To compensate for its disappearance, the seven stars appear out of place, at the base of the crown. It's as if we made a logo based on the national coat of arms of Spain and decided to place the escutcheon with the three fleurs-de-lis between the crown and the shield. This makes no sense. I'm not even mentioning that the Madrid City Council uploaded this logo to its social media in JPG format instead of PNG, which makes its outlines blurry.

On the other hand, the strawberry tree appears with a very simplified design, reduced to just two lines: a straight vertical line representing the trunk, and a curved line representing the tree's crown. It's difficult to identify what it is. The bear's design doesn't match this simplified representation of the strawberry tree. The style doesn't match. The crown, if we disregard the unfortunate placement of the stars, has an acceptable design. When discussing logos based on heraldic shields, I always cite as an example the magnificent design created by Morillas Brand Design in 2006 for the Zaragoza City Council:

This design consisted of simplifying the municipal coat of arms as much as possible without losing its symbolism. The crown is absent, but it wasn't necessary: ​​it's a logo, not a coat of arms. The Madrid City Council wanted to design a logo based on a heraldic shield, and the result is far from perfect, because it was designed with coats of arms in mind, not logos, resulting in a case of trying too hard and failing.

The most successful aspect of Madrid's new image is the Chulapa typeface, created in 2019 by Joan-Carles Casasín and Pablo Gámez based on the font created by ceramist Alfredo Ruiz de Luna (1949-2013) to illustrate the street and square signs of the Spanish capital. This font is public and free to use and can be downloaded from the Madrid City Council's corporate image website. It must be said that Casasín and Gámez are type designers. That's the advantage of hiring professionals for these things.

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Photos: Ayuntamiento de Madrid.