Logo

Pimlico Race Course has a new logo. The second-oldest racetrack in the United States unveiled its logo Tuesday. The design features a cupola weather vane -- an iconic track feature -- and a 'Pimlico' script with 'Home of the Preakness' written below. "We wanted a fresh look before returning next month for the spring meet," Maryland Jockey Club president Tom Chuckas said in a news release. "The great Alfred Vanderbilt once said Pimlico 'is an accepted American institution, devoted to the best interests of a great sport, graced by time, respected for its honorable past.' Pimlico is steeped in tradition and we feel the new logo properly celebrates one of the most historic racetracks in the world.

Get out your crayons and color me stupid, but as I sit here wondering what great mind decided that the Columbia Association logo must change because it can't be scaled down for the latest social media apps, I have to think "What would Jim Rouse do?" As early settlers, the People Tree had and still does have such significance to those of us who moved from major metropolitan areas — in our case, Chicago — where inequality among peoples was rampant. One could sit at the lakefront and look up at the People Tree and imagine the makeup of those 66 figures.

For nearly half a century, Columbia residents have looked to the "People Tree" sculpture as a symbol of founder James Rouse's vision of an inclusive, connected community. Now, the organization that runs the planned town says it will drop images of the tree — a cluster of 66 interconnected human figures — from its signs, uniforms, stationery and business cards at a cost of as much as $200,000. The Columbia Association's People Tree logo is partly a victim of changing times — officials say it doesn't work well for social media or mobile devices.

The Maryland Jockey Club today unveiled the 2012 Preakness logo for the 137th Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the Triple Crown, to be run May 19 at Pimlico Race Course. The 2012 logo, in traditional Maryland colors of red, gold, and black, depicts the horse and jockey as repeating stylized graphics with curved elements that convey movement. The Leffler Agency of Baltimore and Tampa designed the official Preakness logo for the 13th straight year. "The challenge of making a national logo like the Preakness logo every year is the challenge of uniqueness," said Bob Leffler, agency president/owner.

The city's primary election is over, but in one district, the bickering between candidates continues. Belinda Conaway, the only incumbent City Council member to lose her seat, has asked the U.S. attorney for Maryland to prosecute her challenger, alleging her opponent unlawfully used an IRS logo in campaign literature. Conaway failed by 648 votes in her bid for a third term representing the city's northwest side in the Democratic primary last week. She lays much of the blame for that loss on the campaign tactics of her opponent, Nick Mosby.

The new owner of National Premium has overcome at least one hurdle before he has the beer in stores: he's gotten the original formula. No one's had the original formula for Premium for quite some time. The closest facsimile is Heavy Seas' Classic Lager, which owner Hugh Sisson said is loosely based on the original Premium recipe, but differs in that its 100 percent malt where Premium wasn't. Tim Miller, who bought the rights to National Premium last year, said he wouldn't move forward with the revival unless he'd locked into the formula fans of the beer loved and remembered.

How do you like your water towers, naked or with an artful promotional message painted on the side? That's a question the Ocean City Town Council will consider at tonight's meeting, when a proposal to paint a logo on the Worcester Street water tower is expected to be on the agenda. Tourism officials are considering a request from Alli Sports, organizers of the Dew Tour, to paint the tour's logo on the side of the water tower. The logo would read 'Welcome to Ocean City, Proud Home of the Dew Tour" and would stay in place year-round.

You can't miss Todd Brizzi's artistic stamp on Harford Road in Lauraville/Hamilton. He'd just never tell you that. He'd never tell you, as he makes your coffee at Zeke's, that the company's distinctive logo is his work. Or that the company's peculiar-cool coffee-bean-in-a-crab design, its answer to the "siren" logo of a certain company that must not be named, is his as well. That "Fueled by Zeke's" bumper sticker on the Honda Accord driving by? That’s Brizzi, too. He has created the instantly memorable logos for many of the shops on this block -- the barber store Chop Shop, the knitting supply store Spinster, Great Soul Wellness Studio.

Angling for a larger audience with a mix of fact and fiction, Maryland-based Discovery Communications is retooling its Science Channel, changing the name and logo and doubling down on new shows with star hosts. Starting June 8, the Science Channel will drop the 'channel' and become Science. The move comes after it has recently begun airing fact-based shows ("Through the Wormhole" starring Morgan Freeman) alongside science-fiction ("Firefly") and humor ("An Idiot Abroad" with Ricky Gervais)