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| (photo courtesy of Karen Gerhardt) |
NAMHSA recently interviewed Karen Gerhardt, an artist, model horse hobbyist, and graphic designer from Colorado.
NAMHSA: People in the hobby know you for your sculpture, but that isn't all you have
done. Can you give us a little of your artistic background and what attracted
you to art in the first place?
Karen Gerhardt: I was
one of those kids who was "born with it": art plus horses. I've never wanted to
do anything else but draw, paint, and sculpt, and (to my art teachers' chagrin)
mostly just wanted to create horses. I have an associates degree in visual
communication, and a couple years ago retired from a 30-year career in
advertising art/graphic design/art direction. I don't have any formal fine art
training.
N: How
did you come to be involved in the design of the NAMHSA logo? Were you a part of
the original group who put NAMHSA together or did you come on board
after?
KG: I was
the person back in the early 1990's who sparked the initial discussion on the
first internet email list ("Haynet") for the hobby. I wrote a wishful-thinking
post on how it would be so cool to have a live show circuit for model horses
that culminated in a national show every year. And quite a few others online at
the time agreed that it would be cool... so I then posted a "Let's Do It!" sort
of email, and a bunch of us formed a committee, and that's how NAMHSA got
started.
N:
Were you given input and ideas from others or were you given free rein to design
it on your own? And, for those interested in the "how" part, what programs did
you use?
KG: I was
a graphic designer at the time, who designed logos and other print materials for
a living. So I just volunteered to design the logo; the org needed one pronto. I
don't think I even presented more than one logo design, and there was no
approval process or anything more formal. I decided to show an english horse and
a western horse, with simplistic bits that could also be meant to represent
halter horses. The best logos are the simple ones that will reproduce well in
any media, from coffee mugs to t-shirts to ads. It was created using Adobe
Illustrator.
N: Why
was the logo that we are all familiar with chosen to be "the" logo? Why did it
represent the organization best that other options did not?
KG: (see above) :)
N: Looking back at it now, what would you change about the logo, if
anything?
KG: I
could have put more detail into the horse silhouettes. But I created it pretty
fast.
N: Are
there any other pieces of design work that you have done in the model horse
hobby that people may not have known that you had a hand in doing?
KG: I have
also designed the logo for the RESS organization, have designed printed
materials for both Breyer and Peter Stone company, the BOYCC logo in 2011...
probably others I am forgetting!
NAMHSA would like to thank Karen for agreeing to interview with us and for the wonderful logo we've been proud to call our own.
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