PORT ANGELES — Olympic National Park unveiled a new logo and catch phrase for its massive Elwha River Restoration project Tuesday night.
About 30 people looked on as Park Superintendent Karen Gustin displayed the image of a fish swimming in a stream with trees and a mountain in the background below a tagline that reads: “Natural Wonders Never Cease.”
“This logo and this tagline is something we want to share with all of you,” Gustin said during an after-hours unveiling ceremony at the Olympic National Park Visitor’s Center in Port Angeles.
“We are not into owning this image or the message. We want to share it and spread it as far and wide as we can nationally as well as internationally.”
The new logo was designed by Port Angeles graphic artist Laurel Black.
The accompanying tagline was developed by New Path Marketing of Sammamish.
Black also helped park officials create a second logo out of the first. The second logo highlights the fish.
The two logos account for about half of a $10,000 marketing campaign for the project, park spokeswoman Barb Maynes said.
Maynes didn’t know how much was paid to the Sammamish firm.
Gustin said local businesses can use the logo for a small processing fee after a user agreement and style guide is finalized in early December.
“We want to make it pretty easy,” Gustin said.
“We don’t want to be bureaucratic about it, but we’re working on an agreement to license the logo so that we can share it with businesses and companies that want to use it.
“We should have that process in place by the first of December.”
The $350 million restoration project includes the largest dam removal to date in the nation.
The 105-foot Elwha Dam that creates Lake Aldwell and the 201-foot Glines Canyon Dam that forms Lake Mills will be torn down between 2011 to 2014, beginning in September.
Since both dams were built without fish passage in the early 20th century, Pacific salmon were blocked from migrating as far as 70 miles upstream to spawn.
The restoration project is the sum of 43 smaller projects that include a new fish hatchery, water treatment plants and wells.
The new logo follows the “Last Dam Summer” campaign that park officials kicked off in April, distributing 5,000 buttons to mark the last summer before the dams and lakes disappeared from the Elwha Valley.
The park is working with a small marketing firm and expanding its mailing list to the 50 most viewed publications and websites in the nation.
“Our goal is to try to share this great conservation and restoration project that’s happening, because there’s nothing else happening like it in the United States right now,” Maynes said.
“We are working to try to identify different outlets to tell the story.”
Products already containing the logo can be purchased at the Discover Your Northwest bookstore at the visitor center.
Gustin said the new logo and tagline “symbolize the scope and magnitude” of the restoration project.
Co-sponsors of the after-hours celebration included park partners Aramark, Discover Your Northwest and Friends of Olympic National Park.
For information on how to use the logo and tagline, phone Maynes at 360-565-3005 or Barb_Maynes@nps.gov.
________
Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.