The Welsh capital city has a new identity. Cardiff & Co, the organisation responsible for marketing Cardiff, says the new look will sweep away outdated images of daffodils and dragons.

The BBC’s online report inevitably unearthed critics who complained the logo looked like a circle of Smarties or an old-style telephone. I sympathise with any organisation that wants to refresh its identity. The storm over the London 2012 logo showed yet again that instant reactions are rarely positive. It’s very difficult to satisfy those who want something different and those who dislike anything radical. Yet Cardiff & Co are surely right to seek to refresh the city’s image. Back in 1994, Rhodri Morgan – now Wales’s first minister – contributed a thoughtful volume in the Gomer’s Changing Wales series entitled Cardiff: Half-and-half a Capital. Rhodri complained about the way every new development in the capital was lazily called St David’s:

"I have nothing against Welsh patriotism … or Cardiff’s status as a capital city. It’s just that I don’t think the people in charge of choosing these ‘capital of Wales’-type names so repetitively did so out of Welsh patriotism or respect for early British Christianity. They chose St David this and Red Dragon that because it was safe, bland and reassuring and therefore dead right in modern marketing terms."

Rhodri went on to argue Cardiff should make more of its local heroes: Ivor Novello, Shirley Bassey and even pirate Captain Morgan, rather than bland marketing tags.

Over a decade later, a campaign is under way to raise money to commemorate one of these Cardiff characters. My father Bob Skinner is a member of the committee of the charity that is raising money for a statue of Ivor Novello, to be placed outside the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. It will be a fitting memorial to the Welsh composer who was most famous for his haunting First World War song, Keep the home fires burning.