The City of Big Rapids is hosting a New Logo Design Competition, allowing community members to create a new secondary logo for the city.
On Aug. 19, the city opened the competition in hopes of seeing unique logos submitted. The goal of the new logo is to help promote marketing and tourism, and to represent the community of Big Rapids. The city is looking for artwork that reflects the spirit, identity and uniqueness of Big Rapids.
A prize of $500 will be awarded to the winner. Second place will earn $200 for their efforts and third place will earn $100. The winning entries will not automatically become the secondary logo of the city. Instead, they will serve as inspiration and property of the city of Big Rapids after the competition has concluded.
Not only is the competition open to natives of the Big Rapids community, but also to Ferris students and those in the Ferris community. Michelle Stenger, the director of community development, finds it important for Ferris students to participate, noting that they could bring unique artwork to the competition.
“I think that Ferris students bring a unique perspective to the community that maybe some long-standing community members don’t have,” Stenger said. “And since Ferris students have fresh eyes on the community, they can see what they like about it or find out what they see as important. Also, they’re young, so they have some fresher ideas than others. And part of the draw is that we hope that Ferris students become engaged with things going on in the city, and maybe some will hope or choose to stay after graduation and become a part of the community they’ve grown to love.”
With how intertwined the Ferris and Big Rapids communities are, this competition exists as an opportunity for the communities to come together and achieve the common goal of developing a new, strong logo.
Mark Gifford, the city manager of Big Rapids, described what the staff at the city of Big Rapids wants the new logo to represent, and that this was the right time to be able to put the competition together.
“What we want is to represent the community,” Gifford said. “We want it to resonate with people, and when they see it, they think about Big Rapids, and this is something that we’ve struggled with for a while. If you look around the community in terms of signage and branding and so forth, we have a myriad of different ways, styles, fonts, colors and things when you see it, whether it be signs or other things. We want to bring some sort of cohesion to how we demonstrate or market the city.”
Gifford also said that good characteristics for a new logo include something clear, concise, easy to read and easy to digest.
Megan Eppley, the grant coordinator of community development, believes that finding something that both the staff and the community want to represent the city sparked the motivation to put this competition together.
“I think the commission just wanted to see what the community thinks of when they think of Big Rapids,” Eppley said. “We, as a staff, have an idea of what we think represents Big Rapids. We always hope it aligns with what the community wants and we do our best to make that happen, but maybe by engaging the community in this process that helps us to get a better idea of what the people of Big Rapids want, is what drove us to make this competition happen.”
Full participation and creative art designs by members of the Ferris and Big Rapids communities are encouraged. All logo designs are due by Sept. 19 at 4 p.m. The announcement date of the winners is still to be determined.