{ "id": "city-bend-agency", "title": "City of Bend: the agency’s logo and brand-system case study", "publisher": "zöagency", "sourceClass": "primary", "url": "https://zo.agency/case-study-city-of-bend/", "accessedOn": "2026-09-10", "notes": "The agency describes refinement of an existing City logo and development of a unified municipal identity.", "record": "https://bendemblem.com/archive/city-bend-agency/", "evidence": { "id": "city-bend-agency", "kind": "variant", "date": "Undated case study; accessed September 10, 2026", "summary": "The agency describes refinement of an existing City logo and development of a unified municipal identity.", "findings": [ "The displayed mark has narrow, nearly monoline letters, an arch-shaped n, and one heavy circular surround. The agency describes reviewing more than 100 existing materials and refining the logo." ], "limitations": [ "The case study supports attribution of the agency’s stated refinement work, not authorship of the earliest municipal emblem.", "A media upload directory is not a reliable creation or adoption date. This is a municipal identity, not a project download." ], "objects": [ { "path": "archive/online-research/2026-09-10/city-logo-detail.webp", "sha256": "5e3199bb4272b211fce8b2ab48c6f51fbf22d78465b88d9ee6bd9f2090f10e59", "url": "https://zo.agency/wp-content/uploads/elementor/thumbs/COB_Logo.png-rouxxttxg0x66fkatn578ezsq9hj3oz6rl0wda3chs.webp", "accessedOn": "2026-09-10", "role": "received source bytes" }, { "path": "archive/online-research/2026-09-10/zo-city.html", "sha256": "39d32ab97cdbb7d9fcf9c8260b26c24eb0de1a31767bfab2cf6372aaa62e6aa2", "url": "https://zo.agency/case-study-city-of-bend/", "accessedOn": "2026-09-10", "role": "received source bytes" } ], "images": [ { "from": "archive/online-research/2026-09-10/city-logo-detail.webp", "original": "archive/online-research/2026-09-10/city-logo-detail.webp", "page": null, "box": null, "title": "The municipal mark displayed by zöagency", "rights": "Third-party documentary evidence. No project license or fabrication permission is granted.", "color": true, "width": 900, "render": "Source raster; no drawing reconstruction", "sha256": "5e3199bb4272b211fce8b2ab48c6f51fbf22d78465b88d9ee6bd9f2090f10e59" } ], "family": "Municipal narrow-letter mark", "origin": "zöagency claims refinement and brand-system work; original logo author and adoption date unresolved.", "sourceIds": [], "review": { "status": "image-reviewed", "method": "Source page image inspected and findings limited to the material identified below.", "reviewedOn": "2026-09-10" } }, "measurement": [ { "id": "city-bend-agency", "label": "City of Bend identity", "recordId": "city-bend-agency", "role": "specimen", "family": { "id": "the-bureau-roundel", "name": "The bureau roundel", "diagnostic": "Narrow letters, a notched E and a notched B at the same height, an arched third letter, and rounded corners." }, "standsAlone": false, "construction": "The notched construction", "confidence": "high", "readAt": 70.2, "readAtBasis": "the letters alone, at this drawing's own letter cut", "metrics": [ { "key": "deviceAspect", "label": "Device aspect", "what": "The roundel’s width divided by its height. 1.000 is a true circle; anything else is an oval, or a photograph taken at an angle.", "range": "0.977 – 1.048 across the collection", "value": 1 }, { "key": "wordAspect", "label": "Word aspect", "what": "The same ratio for the block of BEND letters alone, once cropped to their own ink.", "range": "0.927 – 1.862; the high end is lettering set wide rather than stacked", "value": 1.08 }, { "key": "figureInk", "label": "Figure ink", "what": "How much of the drawing is ink rather than ground. A heavy ring and fat letters push it up.", "range": "0.169 – 0.728, median 0.493", "value": 0.3775 }, { "key": "coverage", "label": "Coverage", "what": "How much of the normalised square the letters fill once every drawing is reduced to the same size.", "range": "0.198 – 0.576, median 0.456", "value": 0.327 } ], "nearest": [ { "id": "city-standalone-2016", "label": "The City’s roundel alone, 2016", "iou": 0.46, "reading": "different drawings", "href": "/archive/city-standalone-2016/" }, { "id": "chatgpt-reference-2026", "label": "Modernisation reference made with ChatGPT, 2026", "iou": 0.421, "reading": "different drawings", "href": "/archive/chatgpt-reference-2026/" }, { "id": "news-1953-06-16-18", "label": "Bend Chamber of Commerce, June 1953", "iou": 0.4057, "reading": "different drawings", "href": "/archive/news-1953-06-16-18/" } ], "furthest": { "id": "project-common", "label": "BendEmblem.com common master", "iou": 0.1239, "href": "/emblems/files/#cutout-black" }, "ties": [ { "from": "city-standalone-2016", "to": "city-bend-agency", "kind": "measured", "label": "0.93 at the letters cut", "basis": "Read at the smaller of the two drawings’ own letter cuts, where neither mask holds a ring, these two agree at 0.93. At the global cut the same pair scores 0.46, which is a number about two rings. Neither score says which drawing came first.", "test": null, "cites": [] } ], "excludedReason": null, "control": 0.975 } ], "appearances": [], "appearanceLeads": [], "exhibit": { "id": "city-bend-agency", "title": "The City of Bend’s emblem", "intro": "Narrow letters and a heavy circular surround give the municipal emblem a treatment of its own.", "body": [ "Narrow letters and a heavy circular surround give the municipal emblem a treatment of its own. The image here is the one zöagency publishes with its case study for the City.", "The case study calls the City’s mark a “legacy” logo, and says the agency refined it. That settles the question this record was filed to leave open: whatever the agency did, it did not originate the drawing. The City’s roundel is documented in this archive inside a landscape badge from March 2002 and standing alone from December 2016, which is two decades before anything on the agency’s site.", "Dating it took more than the one query the backlog expected. zöagency’s earliest capture of any kind is 21 December 2020. The page at /city-of-bend/ was captured from 6 June 2023 and is a different project entirely — a website about houselessness — with no logo case study on it. The URL that serves the logo case study now, /case-study-city-of-bend/, has a single capture on 5 March 2026 which does not carry the City logo image either. The text quoted here was fetched from the live page on 15 September 2026. So the case study cannot be shown to exist before 2026, and “undated” remains the honest label.", "One line in it is a lead rather than a finding. The agency says it assessed “over 100 different pieces” and reviewed the City’s “entire identity history”. That is a body of research about this archive’s own subject, held by a named firm in Bend, and it is filed as something to ask about rather than something to cite." ], "related": [ "city-neighborhoods-2023" ], "date": "Undated case study", "collection": "emblems", "images": [ { "name": "plate-1", "from": "archive/online-research/2026-09-10/city-logo-detail.webp", "original": "archive/online-research/2026-09-10/city-logo-detail.webp", "page": null, "sha256": "5e3199bb4272b211fce8b2ab48c6f51fbf22d78465b88d9ee6bd9f2090f10e59", "box": null, "width": 1000, "caption": "The municipal mark displayed by zöagency.", "alt": "Thin black BEND letters enclosed by a heavy circle, above the words City of Bend.", "credit": "City of Bend emblem · image published by zöagency", "sourceUrl": "https://zo.agency/wp-content/uploads/elementor/thumbs/COB_Logo.png-rouxxttxg0x66fkatn578ezsq9hj3oz6rl0wda3chs.webp", "color": true } ], "publication": "zöagency", "galleryTitle": "The City of Bend", "galleryDescription": "Narrow letters sit within a heavy circular surround in the municipal mark displayed by zöagency.", "quote": "The City of Bend had a legacy logo but no unified brand system—every department was interpreting it differently across dozens of applications. After assessing over 100 different pieces and reviewing their entire identity history, we transformed the chaos into a cohesive brand system that gave each department its own identity within a unified framework." }, "displayAssets": [ { "path": "/archive/city-bend-agency/plate-1.webp", "source": "archive/online-research/2026-09-10/city-logo-detail.webp", "sourceBox": null, "height": 130, "bytes": 5546, "width": 179, "quality": 82, "title": "The municipal mark displayed by zöagency.", "rights": "City of Bend emblem · image published by zöagency", "derivation": "Cut from archive/online-research/2026-09-10/city-logo-detail.webp; display source archive/online-research/2026-09-10/city-logo-detail.webp: the full 179×130 px page. Converted to color WebP at 179 px wide, quality 82. Context thumbnail; open the source record for full-resolution reading." } ], "pageSources": [], "clipping": null }