New Yorkers On New 'We Love NYC' Logo: We Hate It

NEW YORK CITY — A new ad campaign for New York City aims for a simple message to rally city dwellers after a rough few years: "We NYC Heart."

Or, at least that's how many New Yorkers, graphic designers and Twitter users read the logo unveiled Monday.

The logo and campaign slogan is actually "We Love NYC" — an adaptation of the iconic "I Love NY" — and aims to signal that the city has rebounded from the coronavirus pandemic, said Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul during an announcement in Times Square.

“We took the ‘I’ out of ‘I Love New York’ and we brought the ‘We,’” Adams said.

But the campaign's launch stumbled right out the gate, starting with the logo.

Critics simply couldn't find it in their hearts to love the logo's design.

They quickly lambasted it for not only failing to reach the aesthetic simplicity and elegance of famed graphic designer Milton Glaser’s design for the “I ❤ NY” campaign that launched in 1977, but also being confusing.

"I need to know how much that horrendous we nyc heart graphic cost," tweeted @scabellumpedum.

"Font aside (and that’s a big aside) this reads We NYC Heart to me???" one person tweeted.

"What kind of sanitized, I made this with clip art' bull---- is this?" another wrote.

"There is no character to this at all, the font sucks, and it doesn't even read as 'we love NYC' it reads as 'we NYC' with a heart next to it. I can only hope this is a prank because this design is a joke."

"This is literally the worst design I’ve ever, ever seen," yet another wrote.

To compound the troubles, the campaign's welovenyc.nyc website didn't work for many people who tried to access it Monday.

Not only that, but the Twitter handle @WeLoveNYC was actually already taken by a user named Mark Scally in 2009. Many organizations such as the New-York Historical Society ended up tagging this apparently inactive account instead of the official one in tie-in tweets.

The online wave of aesthetic criticism arguably won't tamp down the campaign's message, at least if New Yorkers take it in the spirit Hochul described.

"'I Love New York' was a message to the rest of the world," she said. "'We Love New York City' is a message to all of you, to the people who have stayed here, who never gave up, who do believe that New York City's greatest days do lie ahead."