I take a dim view, ordinarily, of the silly habit large organizations have of naming everything. If there’s a big, multi-day story, news networks will give it a name and a logo. New pieces of legislation have to have stupid acronyms that remind the reader of fourth-grade English homework (think of the USA PATRIOT act). Every time a major politician goes on a trip, it has to have a “theme” and a name emblazoned on the podium and behind the speaker.

So you’d think I would take a similarly dim view of the government’s plan to add a logo to all the projects that are underwritten with stimulus money.

But I actually think it’s a pretty good idea. Here, the logo is actually being used in teh way it is supposed to be: as a reminder, a branding mark.

My beef with the incessant titling of things is that it always seems more driven by bureaucratic issues than by real-world concerns. Ordinary people do not need a title for a presidential trip, and they don’t think of the budget as a book . . . they think of it as “the budget.”

But a recovery-funds logo is a nice reminder and can actually be a branding mark. It can help organize disparate things (all the different, specific programs being supported with recovery money) into a unified whole. This is palpably different than the typical use of titles and “themes” that I described above, which is all about spin.

By contrast, this is actually helpful and can serve a civic purpose.