Lambton County is getting a new look – at least its logo is.

A county employee who won the $500 prize in an internal contest in 1990 developed the logo, used on county letterhead and signs.

The logo, which features a blue block ‘L’ with wheat, water and an oil derrick has been updated – giving the ‘L’ a stylistic swoop and adding colour to the water, land and wheat.

The county has used the logo for the last 25 years and with the new Sarnia-Lambton branding and “Discoveries that Matter” logo, staff thought it was time to “update and refresh” the logo to make it “more contemporary and compelling.”

The spent $1,500 on the redesign and suggest the use of it be phased in as needed.

The logo was presented to surprised county councilors many of whom liked the update but were confused by its sudden appearance.

“I’m just puzzled how this could come to us in a completed process,” says Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley. “I don’t disagree it needs up date, have us agree and then the process how were going to do it.”

He says another call for staff to help could have produced another logo; “We could have had a whole different logo,” Bradley says.

“In retrospect, we should have gone to council and let them know we were going to do it,” says CAO Ron VanHorne adding several years ago the county staff asked permission to find a new logo and were denied. “We were just going to tweak the existing logo because it didn’t look well with the Discovery that Matters piece.”

Several councillors, including Enniskillen Mayor Kevin Marriott, expressed support for the change. “The logo looks good for the cost,” he says. Sarnia-Lambton’s branding exercise took several years and $75,000 to complete.

But some were not as happy with the change. “The old logo is good. It stood the test of time. It’s tradition and it didn’t cost us $1,500,” says Plympton-Wyoming Mayor Lonny Napper.