Graphic Designer Creating a Logo for Every One of Seattle’s 400+ Parks

By Seattle Mag July 31, 2014

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This article originally appeared in the August 2014 issue of Seattle magazine.

In 2012, then Seattle-based graphic designer Dave Battjes set a design challenge for himself to create a logo for every one of the more than 400 parks in the city of Seattle—at the ambitious rate of one a day. “Most of Seattle’s parks have interesting beginnings or rich histories tying them to the Olmsted brothers or trolley systems. Some even have early settler roots,” says Battjes, who has lived in Greenwood, Belltown and Capitol Hill. “But, actually, the most surprising and interesting thing to me was the small triangles of overgrown greenery bursting though paved streets that are actual parks, managed by the city.” At press time, Battjes, who has since moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to be near family, had completed logos for 250 parks, capturing each one’s essence with evocative type, color and imagery: a cowboy hat for Georgetown’s Oxbow Park, a crown for Crown Hill Glen and an electrical bolt for former West Seattle substation Dakota Place Park. After a year’s hiatus, Battjes has returned to his mission with a modified plan to debut a new logo on Tumblr (parksofseattle.tumblr.com) every week. All the logos can be purchased as art prints, T-shirts, hoodies, coffee mugs and iPhone cases (shown below) at Society6.com.

 

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