Straight From the Horse’s Head, More Encinitas Seal Angst

Once doomed to the scrap heap of city government, the much-maligned Encinitas city seal, prominently featuring a genial-looking horse head, may have found new life.

After picking the winner of a contest to design a new logo, some council members are viewing the old seal with newfound admiration. They still plan to award $500 to artist Annika Nelson at next Wednesday’s meeting, but some council members are not ready to give her design the . . . well, seal of approval.

“I feel Encinitas should have something better,” said Councilwoman Gail Hano.

As followers of the ebbs and flows of Encinitas city government will recall, the City Council decided in March to dump the official city seal, adopted five years ago, shortly after Encinitas incorporated as a city.

Designed with elements from different communities (the horse head represents the relatively rural area of Olivenhain), the seal includes poinsettias, a wave, a sea gull and several other symbols of community life.

Council members, apparently bothered by the seal for some time, said it was too cluttered. Not becoming to a proud city like Encinitas, they said.

Since new stationery will be needed when the new City Hall opens in November, it seemed the time to finally do something about the graphic had come.

In the grand tradition of democracies, the council opted to stage the design contest, which was cheaper than paying a consultant $7,500 to design a new seal. The winner would receive $500 and the admiration of all those who would gaze upon the seal in perpetuity.

In response, the city received 130 entries produced by 22 artists.

Early in June, a three-member committee chose three finalists, from which the council picked a simple logo featuring a sunset, palm trees and poinsettias designed by Nelson, a local artist.

Yet, just when the old logo was about to be put out to pasture, some members of the council began grumbling again. The new logo was too simple, they said. Not really what we were looking for, they said.

Last week, Hano and Mayor Maura Wiegand were appointed to a subcommittee to arrive at some sort of compromise, perhaps refining Nelson’s logo.

“If we can’t come up with a compromise, then I would suggest leaving it the way it is,” said Hano. Maybe make the horse’s head a little smaller and clean up a few lines, and that old design isn’t so bad, she said.

But compromise won’t be easy. Wiegand likes the new design. The old design “didn’t function well as a design, and it didn’t reproduce well,” she said.

The new design “looks like a cheerful, happy statement,” Wiegand said.

For her part, Nelson, a 23-year-old graduate of UC Santa Cruz, said she is “pretty disappointed” by the council’s actions.

“It doesn’t make me believe in politics much,” she said. “You can’t design by committee, you end with a giraffe with a long neck and small head.”

Nelson said she might be willing to work on a redesign, but she is also tired of the whole mess.

“I had fun doing it, and if they don’t like it, tough,” she said with a laugh.

Jim Baumann, the publisher of Encinitas Magazine, who served on the three-person jury that chose the contest finalists, said that he believes Nelson’s logo “needs some refinement” but that it is a solid, usable design.

“I do think the (council) has turned this into a public relations blunder,” he said. “It doesn’t look good when you have a contest, pick a winner and then say you don’t like what they did.”

The controversy apparently has not roused the passions of locals.

After asking for input from the community at last week’s council meeting, Hano said she has “not received one call regarding the city seal.”

With the council wrestling with budget problems and numerous long-range planning issues, Hano and her compatriots acknowledge that the logo is not the most pressing issue facing the city. If a compromise can’t be readily worked out, the issue may be put on a back burner before the council “seals the city’s fate,” Wiegand said.

“The city will not rise or fall on the logo,” Councilwoman Anne Omsted said. “It’s not really significant in the overall scheme of things.”