Signs of the times for Hermosa Beach as city mulls tweaks to brand
An “entryway” sign at the south end of Hermosa Beach on Hermosa Avenue. The sign features the city’s logo and characteristic typeface. Photo
In Paul Beatty’s National Book Award-winning 2015 novel “The Sellout,” the narrator breaks down towns throughout Southern California by the color scheme of their street signs. The signs of Hawthorne, Torrance, and South Gate are of a “working-class cactus green” he writes, while Manhattan Beach’s “sky blue” totems signified a general lack of things to worry about.
The signs in Hermosa Beach, on the other hand, are “the bland brown of cheap blended malt whiskey.” It’s not entirely an insult in Beatty’s telling. And according to the latest input from Hermosa’s elected officials, the signs aren’t likely to change much anytime soon.
The City Council held a study session last week devoted to the city’s “visual identity.” And while council members had slightly different takes on what the city’s brand ought to accomplish, they came to a consensus that the symbols closely associated with the city ought to remain mostly unchanged.
Along with signage, the council considered the city seal and logo. The seal, affixed to official city documents, will not be changing, while the logo, which is used more informally, could be in for modest tweaks.
“‘Yeah, that’s Hermosa. But it looks a little different in the logo.’ I think that’s what we’re veering toward,” said City Manager Sergio Gonzalez, summing up the council’s preferred approach.
The council agreed to open a call for artists to pitch city staff for possibilities along the lines of a series of designs that had been submitted by local artist and designer Daniel Inez. Inez, co-founder of the Pacific Stranded Design Center on Aviation Boulevard, volunteered to help the city with the process, and submitted a dozen different variations on the existing logo, most of them hewing closely to the current one.
Along with his work at Pacific Stranded, Inez is also known for M1SK, an art-and-apparel collective that casts a protective eye on South Bay culture. Addressing the council, Inez urged them not to hew too far from the existing logo, saying that Hermosa residents have an especially strong attachment to tradition.
“It will make more than half the people unhappy. Or at least more than half the people I care about,” Inez said, half-jokingly.
Before a decision on what changes, if any, are to be made, the city will hold a town-hall style meeting, tentatively set for the coming months, in which residents will be able to provide input. But a more detailed conversation about how to use the city’s iconography awaits.
The seal — an orange and blue sunburst encircling an “Hb” — contains four images meant to represent Hermosa’s heritage, including the brand applied to cattle on Rancho Redondo in the early days of California statehood. According to a staff report, the current seal was adopted by the City Council in 1964. Existing law empowers the city to protect the use of the seal. Several years ago, for example, the city sent a cease-and-desist letter to a resident who had produced a flyer, prominently featuring the seal, that criticized the proposed Skechers office complex on Pacific Coast Highway.
The official seal of Hermosa Beach was adopted by the city council in 1964. Image courtesy City of Hermosa Beach
The city logo — an “Hb” set off-center inside an impressionistic rendering of the Vetter Windmill on Pacific Coast Highway, often accompanied by a pair of soaring seabirds — replaced a logo from the ‘20s, which referred to Hermosa as the “Aristocrat” of California Beaches. The current logo was developed by unknown city staff members in 1968, and it includes the city’s characteristic jointed, sans-serif typeface. Over the ensuing decades, variations found their way into punk rock and visual art.
The city is far more tolerant of uses of its logo than it is appropriation of the city seal. And while the ubiquity of the city’s insignia can be seen as a compliment, council members recognized that it had the potential to dilute the brand. Effective logos and seals, council members said, help it make clear that “Hb” stands for Hermosa Beach and not, say, Huntington Beach.
But consistency is not just a problem with unsanctioned uses. Official signage throughout the city, such as on entryways, legal notice signs, and parks, can vary in ways that are confusing for visitors. Nico De Anda-Scaia, the assistant to the City Manager, said that this was often the result of physical infrastructure lagging behind updates to laws. He pointed to the oddity of lampposts in the city containing cigarette butt collectors, but appearing in close proximity to signs announcing that smoking is against the law.
The lack of clarity can also present a problem for business owners, who said it can make it more challenging for customers to find their stores. In a remark that recalled Gertrude Stein’s famous dismissal of Oakland, Andrea Jacobson, owner of JAMA Auto House on PCH, said, “When people drive through Hermosa, they don’t always know they’re there.”
The city is periodically replacing its street signs, said Public Works Superintendent Ells Freeman. Hermosa’s older, “classic” signs are ceramic, but state law years ago required all newly installed signs to be reflective. The city replaces between 100 and 150 signs per year, with many of the new signs needed to supplant those that had been vandalized or stolen, Freeman said. The city does periodic maintenance on the “entryway” signs at the north and south ends of town, but it is not clear when those signs were erected.
“They’re beyond my time,” said the long-tenured Freeman.
Updates to insignia have recently been under consideration throughout the Beach Cities. Last month, Redondo Beach unveiled replacement street signs intended for Artesia Boulevard, which are blue rather than the usual green. In October, the Manhattan City Council considered a variety of possible updates to its wayfinding signage. In Hermosa, the look at branding comes ahead of several upcoming city ventures in which it will be prominently on display, including long-planned gateway sign near the Community Center, and a redesign of the city website.
The city had already received substantial input about signage from the PCH-Aviation Improvement Committee. CalTrans, which has jurisdiction over the highway, has become a less enthusiastic partner in the potential upgrades since the committee formed in 2010, and other city priorities have occupied the council’s focus. The council last week was disinclined to incorporate the design work of Katherine Spitz Associates, a landscape architecture firm that proposed a significant overhaul of the city’s signage for the improvement committee, which would have touched areas far beyond the corridor.
The unwillingness to make big alterations to the city’s brand may ultimately be rooted in the feeling that, amidst soaring home prices and burgeoning construction, signage and logos are some of the few things Hermosa can keep the same. Resident Ron Newman, owner of Baja Sharkeez, has restaurants in more than a dozen cities throughout Southern California. But he said that the pace of uprooting here was the reason to stick to what came before.
“This city is really changing a lot. We have to keep the character somehow,” he said.