NEW VILLAGE LOGO APPROVED

By JUDITH KRAMER, Director, Community Relations

The Village of Matteson's President and Board of Trustees recently unanimously approved a new Village logo, proposed by the Community Relations Department, and its use as a Village-wide symbol of the Village of Matteson.

The new logo will be used on all Village stationery, business cards, advertisements, vehicles, water towers and promotional materials, as the various old logos are eventually phased out.

It was designed by Bill Hutchins, area industrial designer. Hutchins is well-known throughout the Chicagoland area as a graphic artist and has an extensive background in corporate logo design as well as product and industrial design. He is a graduate of the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in Industrial Design and has received many awards for design in his 27 years as a designer and graphic artist.

According to Hutchins, the design is the result of many months of conceptualizing and discussion with Matteson's Director of Community Relations. "The circle is, of course, a universal symbol, familiar to all. On a very large scale, planets and their orbits are circular. On a very small scale, atomic particles and their paths appear to be circular. And in general, we think about cycles, for example; life cycle, etc., as being circular. The "M" element of the logo is strong, distinctive, has a substantial recognition factor, and can be seen as a representation of the Village's emergence as the keystone community of the south/southwest suburbs — much as the sun emerges from the earth's horizon at each daybreak."

"We (the Community Relations Director and I) felt it was important to include the name, 'Matteson' in the body of the logo to assist in name recognition and awareness of the Village in areas outside of the south/southwest suburbs, essential to its economic and residential development programs," explained Hutchins.

"Importantly," he added. "We managed to retain the spacial quality of the traditional "bell" used by the Village for some time; taking the positive and negative spaces and using them in a more contemporary current form."

Kramer, Director of Community Relations and coordinator of the logo design, said, "the Village President and Board of Trustees, along with Village Administration confirmed the feelings of both the Village's Community Development and Community Relations Department, several months ago, that new, bold and updated logo design was a necessary element in the success of image and marketing programs which have been included in the Village's 1987-88 budget, and in future programs of a similar nature." •

Page 24 / Illinois Municipal Review / October 1987