Don’t judge city by a logo

Dave Brooks

As the Huntington Beach tourism community tries to settle on a new

logo in its “Surf City USA” campaign, city leaders are moving the

city away from its own surfing moniker to a more official look.

Last week, City Administrator Penny Culbreth-Graft had public

information officer Laurie Payne change the logo on the city’s

website from the “Surf City, Huntington Beach” logo to the city’s

official seal. The seal includes a picture of breaking waves and

Catalina Island -- the same image visitors sometimes see when looking

west from a city beach on a very clear day.

“She said she felt it was more official-looking,” Payne said.

There were also concerns that the city didn’t own the rights to

the 11-year-old logo, licensed to business partners Tina Viray and

Bud Wescott, who operate a small apparel store on the Huntington

Beach Pier. While the city has the trademark for the phrase “Surf

City, Huntington Beach,” ownership of the actual graphic is a little

ambiguous.

“The city owns the trademarked phrase, and we created the

graphics,” said Viray, who estimated her business has sold more than

100,000 items with the Surf City moniker on it.

The seal the city is now using will appear on some letterhead and

official documents, but city employees will likely have a choice

about which graphic they want to use.

“(Culbreth-Graft) hasn’t sent out any policy on it yet,” Payne

said.

The city will now have three logos -- the city seal, the Surf City

logo, and the “HB” graphic created in the 1970s through a city

contest. That graphic contains images of a sailboat and a surfer to

represent the city’s beach community, as well as a picture of a home

and a molecule to represent the many people working in Huntington

Beach’s aerospace industries.

Councilman Dave Sullivan said he wishes the City Council would

have been consulted about the change of the city’s seal.

“I would rather see a seal that represents the city instead of a

view of Catalina,” he said.

He also said he did not like the Surf City logo because it only

paid homage to the surfing community.

“I like the idea of a seal that represents everything that goes on

in the city,” he said.

In the meantime, the Huntington Beach Conference and Visitor’s

Bureau is working to solidify it’s “Surf City, USA” marketing

campaign and has narrowed its logo down to a horizontal graphic

featuring a photograph of the Huntington Beach Pier in the shape of

surf board.

During a Tuesday Board of Directors meeting, the group voted

unanimously to proceed forward with that image after survey results

indicated overwhelming support for the logo over a graphic of a

shapely surfer, longboarding near the Huntington Beach Pier.

The horizontal logo “rated really high with residents and overall

visitors,” said bureau President Doug Traub, adding that the image

was especially popular with overnight guests.

“Coincidentally, those are the same type of people we’re trying to

reach,” he said.

The new logo will be sent back to a graphic artist, who will

present several different color treatments for the new logo -- board

members said they are interested in seeing the image in more than

just orange and black.

After the board chooses a final color scheme, the image will be

licensed through Los Angeles-based Global Icons and sold on

everything from beach cruisers to T-shirts and will appear on

promotional material for the Conference and Visitor’s Bureau.

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* DAVE BROOKS covers City Hall. He can be reached at (714)

966-4609 or by e-mail at dave.brooks@latimes.com.