The ORTWS Board is excited to roll out a new design for Oregon Chapter’s main logo. We now have a logo that is representative of Oregon and was created from start to finish by an Oregon artist!
In March 2020, a call to membership was sent out asking for volunteers to contribute to the ORTWS Logo Workgroup. Many members answered that call and helped to determine the process to find artists, develop potential designs, and choose the next ORTWS logos. We want to thank those members for their time and energy along with the board members that made up the ORTWS Logo Workgroup. As a part of a logo design contest, we asked for artists throughout Oregon to contribute their work and received many wonderful designs. Our choice was a hard one to make!
We ultimately decided to go with artist Katie Culbertson’s logo, which features a simple, bold design with the form of a bird suggesting a meadowlark (Oregon’s state bird). This will be the main logo for ORTWS, and we couldn’t be more pleased!
Artist Highlight: Katie Culbertson, Creator of the New ORTWS Logo
Katie Culbertson has lived in Oregon almost her entire life and grew up with a strong appreciation for nature and the outdoors. She spent her childhood camping, hiking, and traveling throughout the state and as an adult still enjoys outdoorsy things such as mushroom hunting/foraging and kayaking. She has combined this appreciation for nature with a natural artistic talent and now works on branding and logos. This was her first design contest.
A coworker forwarded the contest information to her at the beginning of quarantine in March (when she had quite a bit of time on her hands) and she figured she might as well give it a shot!
She began by submitting a very minimalist design of a beaver. A few months later the logo work group contacted her letting her know she was among the finalists. Although the beaver icon wasn’t chosen for the final product, the logo work group recognized her design style as one that stood out. In working with the team, we decided on the state bird (a western meadowlark) as the subject of the logo. Katie made sure that the new design echoed the simplicity of the original submission. She studied various wildlife photography and nature illustrations to get the look right. We knew the design needed a rich yellow, and eventually the blue was added to compliment the yellow. All logos take quite a bit of team effort to settle on what will work best for the organization, and this one was no exception! Eventually we had all the components where we wanted them, and the work group and artist were very satisfied with the final result.
We appreciate Katie’s dedication to the development process. She let us know that designing the logo for an organization like ORTWS has been a great honor, especially being able to do work for an organization she really believes in and wants to support. Katie said it is every graphic designer’s dream to have a job for an organization that truly interests them!