Somerville High School Graphic Design Students design outstanding logo to reflect Committee’s mission

When the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) decided to update their logo, they could have hired a professional, but instead they chose to partner with the talented students in the Somerville High School Graphic Design & Visual Communications Program of the Center for Career and Technical Education. By all accounts, it was a great choice.

Teacher Nelia Braga challenged the six seniors in the program to develop a new logo that reflected the work of the Community Preservation Committee and Somerville’s character as a city. So Dylan Alvarado, Anthony Araujo-Amaral, Steven Bates, Augusto Oliveira Da Silva, Michael Rosenberger, and Manny Santiago got to work. They coordinated closely with CPC members to refine their initial ideas into the final design, and both the new logo and the professionalism of the students garnered high praise.

“The future of Somerville belongs to our youngest residents, and we saw the logo project as an opportunity to both spread the word about the work of the CPA and to engage and celebrate the talent and energy of our teens,” said Liz Duclos-Orsello, CPC member and chair of the logo sub-committee. “It is with gratitude that we thank them and Ms. Braga for their seriousness of purpose, their professionalism, and the final product, which is truly a unique reflection of this wonderfully dynamic city. As a parent of an SHS student, a member of the CPC, and an advocate for service-learning and youth development in my professional life, I could not be prouder of this new logo and the process by which it came about.”

Community Preservation Act (CPA) funds can be used to fund affordable housing, historic preservation, open space and outdoor recreation land projects. The new logo artfully unites those four categories into one attractive design. Its four squares contain symbols that represent completed CPA projects in each of the four funding areas. One image represents Prospect Hill Tower, which was stabilized with CPA funds in 2015 and is now open to the public for special events such as First Flag and docent tours during warm weather. Another represents CPA funds that are contributing to the creation of 45 new units of affordable housing in Somerville. The Community Path will be repaved this year and the City will start a design process to improve the existing Path, all using CPA funds, and an image of a bicycle on a path depicts that effort. Finally, the Board of Aldermen is currently considering the CPC’s recommendation to provide funding to the Mystic River Watershed Association and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation to start a design process for the Blessing of the Bay Boathouse Park. A symbol of the river and park thus completes the logo.

“The CPA in Somerville is, I believe, a model of how the funding can be used to broaden the idea of who has a stake in the city’s future,” said Duclos-Orsello. “Part of this approach has been a commitment to increasing the range of voices and perspectives “at the table” at each step of our work. It was in this spirit that we reached out to the graphic design students at Somerville High School, rather than to a more traditional graphic design consultant, to help us create a unique logo for CPA funded projects. The entire Community Preservation Committee commends them for their outstanding work. I hope they are as proud of the logo they created as we are of them.”

For more information on the CPA visit the City’s website at www.somervillema.gov/cpa, where you can also sign up for the CPA Email Newsletter by clicking “Sign Up for CPA News.”