Everyone knows what New Haven stands for — Eli Whitney, the Green, Yale, apizza, the Black Panthers…we could go on and on.But to turn the equation around: What stands for New Haven?Can the City of Elms be reduced to just two or three letters — understood and accepted by the big, bad world beyond the […]
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Everyone knows what New Haven stands for — Eli Whitney, the Green, Yale, apizza, the Black Panthers...we could go on and on.
But to turn the equation around: What stands for New Haven?
Can the City of Elms be reduced to just two or three letters — understood and accepted by the big, bad world beyond the Q Bridge?
We Lilliputians live in the shadow of a giant, NYC. If you really [heart] it, it’s just NY. And it’s not for nothing that Randy Newman loves LA — what other city can be so definitively reduced to two little letters?
Our nation’s capital is D.C., but those initials have nothing to do with the actual name of the city built on a malarial swamp and named after the Father of Our Country (not that he would have approved). K.C. may be a respectable Midwestern metropolis (world’s greatest barbecue, for one thing) but to many of us the initials “K.C.” conjure the leader of the Sunshine Band.
S.F. could be San Francisco (sorry, Santa Fe!), but to people in northern California the City by the Bay is just “The City” (although curiously, the uniforms of their NBA juggernaut team have it as “The Town” — go figure).
Well, N.H. could be us, too — were it not for that long, skinny state to our north, where untaxed lumberjacks Live Free or Die — the Cement-Head State. In next-door West Haven we have a college that styles itself as “UNH” (why not “UWH”?), but outside of a ten-mile radius those initials signify the University of New Hampshire, Q,E.D.
If only we could induce Vermont’s evil twin to secede from the Union, ‘NH’ could be ours and ours alone. Our ‘NH’ (at top) is in fact one of the most indelible logos in the history of American industrial design. Swiss-born designer and Yale professor Herbert Matter created the logo in 1955. His client, the New Haven Railroad, folded just 13 years later, but Matter’s indomitable stacked ‘NH’ is still seen on some Metro North equipment used on the New Haven Line — as well as in the hearts and dreams of countless little boys, old and young, and their toy trains.
Which leaves us with two, three-letter candidates: HVN, and its upstart challenger, NHV. Same three letters; different order.
As the seven people who regularly fly from Tweed-New Haven Airport (to Philadelphia, by process of elimination) know so well, HVN is the FAA’s designation for that foundering flyway. Rendering “New Haven” as ‘HVN’ is a bit of a stretch, but not so obscure as, say, “EWR” for Newark, N.J.
Which leaves us with ‘NHV’. Marketing maven Chuck Mascola (he of the Group that bears his name) knows more about this stuff than anyone else we know, so we asked him: Which is better — HVN or NHV?
“When it comes to marketing: be distinctive, memorable and own-able,” says the Chuckster. “NHV is all those things.”
Distinctive? “It’s not East Haven or West Haven,” Mascola says, “as HVN could be.” (Or South Haven.)
Memorable? “It’s easy to recall, and it’s not New Hampshire.”
‘Own-able’? “HVN is forever associated with Tweed New Haven, which is a colossal negative image known to any traveler who has had the misfortune flying through there,” he concludes. “Why perpetuate that?”
Q.E.D.
— Michael C. Bingham
