Meet the mascot
By NANCY KIMBALL
School district unveils Glacier High logo
The Daily Inter Lake
Glacier High School now has a public face - and it's a snarling, navy and green wolf.
The new Glacier Wolfpack logo was unveiled Tuesday night at the School District 5 board meeting.
Besides being marched out for athletic competitions and standing as the identifier for the 900 students expected to grace the halls when the school opens in fall 2007, the logo and colors will become a design anchor for CTA Architects as the firm completes its work on the 239,000-square-foot building.
And Kadie Zimmerman and Jazzmyne Loyns have artistic bragging rights.
The girls, who will be Flathead High School seniors next year, will leave a design legacy for the new school when they leave their Flathead alma mater next spring.
They won the school's contest conducted this spring among all high-school, junior-high and elementary students who eventually would attend either Flathead High or Glacier High.
In answer to the April 24 challenge, 88 students submitted their original art to suggest what they thought the new logo should look like. They had until May 10 to submit their art.
Loyns, an avid sketch artist, figured she did hers in a couple of hours two days before it was due.
"I felt it would be really neat if I could do something [that would be] in the school forever," said Loyns, now contemplating a graphic arts career. "And it would look pretty good on a resume."
Zimmerman, on the other hand, had devised a mascot design on her own months ago when her brother was given a class assignment to devise a logo.
"I decided I'd just do my own alongside his," she said. Since it was done anyway, she submitted it for the contest.
Zimmerman had loaded up on fine arts throughout her three-year Flathead High career, including Advanced Placement art. She's planning on a career in art or science.
Loyns took Susan Guthrie's drawing class during her first semester at Flathead High, after moving here a year ago from North Carolina.
Loyns lettered a big "G" for Glacier, then drew a howling wolf head in the middle. She added more wolves around the bottom, a full-body view and a couple of profiles. Some were howling, she recalled. She scanned it into a computer and popped in the color, with vivid green on the "G."
Zimmerman sketched three wolves - "If it's a Wolfpack, there should be more than one wolf," she reasoned - that taper off to the right, almost in the shape of a mountain. They're more of an impression of a wolf, she said, with colors tapering from dark to light along with the wolves. Tapered lettering denoted Glacier High Wolfpack.
Both girls were happy with their results.
So was the selection committee, composed of a couple of students, a couple of teachers, a couple of community members and Flathead Assistant Principal/Activities Director Mark Dennehy.
Winning art had to be green and navy, and use accents of white or gray. It had to be marketable, evoke pride, be readable and identifiable, and have the ability to be embroidered.
Dennehy led the collaborative efforts among students, parents, community members and art professionals.
They brought in Heidi Haugen of Josten's Inc., the company that provides graduates' caps and gowns. Haugen, a graphic designer in Minneapolis, worked with the committee May 18 to go through the submissions, choose the winners and then brainstorm on the final combined design.
She submitted designs the next day, and on June 5 everything was finalized.
The Flathead High Student Council threw in a $100 prize, which Loyns and Zimmerman split.
Today, CTA Architects gets the design to send the Wolfpack off and running.
Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com.