No more flying hammerhead shark: Houston officials seek entries for new city logo

What you need to know:

• Houston city officials have launched a public contest to replace the city’s logo in an effort to use clearer artwork that reflects the community.
• The current, decades-old logo became distorted after digitization and becomes even less clear when reproduced at small sizes. For example, a bird appears to be a flying shark, officials said.
• Artists can submit designs through April 27, with finalists advancing to a public vote and winners receiving prizes and recognition.

• Short on time but need the local news scoop? Get free weekly news in your inbox for Mat-Su, from Mat-Su.

Most of the problems with Houston’s city logo can be blamed on the computer age. Now, city officials are running a contest to find a fix.

All was well with the city’s longtime logo when it was used as visual artwork in person, city officials and local history buffs said. It was created as part of a contest for schoolchildren, said Elsie O’Brien, who worked as the city’s clerk in the 1980s and later sat on the City Council. It is supposed to show an angler enjoying the river against fireworks, green bushes and a mountain as a bird soars overhead.

But when officials digitized the logo about 20 years ago, things got weird, current city staff said.

The depiction of a fishing line changed from a shadow near the person in waders to a squiggle that appears to stem from their torso. The fireworks turned into a blurry shrub. Shrink the art down for printing or publication? The problems only get worse.

“So when you shrink it down, it looks like there’s a hammerhead shark flying through the air,” said Charlie Shupe, the city’s public works clerk who helped create the new contest. “There’s a guy with a fishing pole, and it looks like he is peeing in the river. So there are a lot of problems we are seeing with the current one.”

The jokes make themselves.

Shupe and other city officials are hoping Alaskans can help create an update by submitting original artwork as part of a contest to find the perfect new city logo. They want to attract new art that reflects Houston’s history and spirit while also creating something with less visual ambiguity, they said.

City staff will pick finalists that will go out for a public vote via social media or the city’s website, he said. Entries close April 27.

Shupe said they also want to ensure the final product is kind to Houston.

“We’ll definitely filter out the bad ones — because we know we’re going to get a few joke ones,” he said. “We don’t want to have piles of trash or people smoking marijuana.”

All finalists and winners will receive gift baskets. The person with the second-most votes after the social media votes will also receive public recognition, while the top winner will receive a framed photo with Mayor Carter Cole, official recognition as the logo’s designer and inclusion in a feature in the Frontiersman newspaper, according to a city social media post.

The contest is open to city and noncity residents. No AI-generated work will be accepted, and the winning artwork will become the property of the city, officials said.

Artwork can be mailed to P.O. Box 940027, Houston, AK 99694; delivered by hand to Houston City Hall; or emailed to publicworks@houston-ak.gov.

-- Contact Amy Bushatz at contact@matsusentinel.com