Cotati City Council
Agenda Staff Report
Item type: REGULAR AGENDA (ACTION)
To: City Council
Subject: Review of Draft City Seal
Date: February 14, 2023
Written by: Damien O'Bid, City Manager
Recommendation
It is recommended that the City Council discuss the draft city seal and provide direction to staff on revisions for a final seal.
Background
City staff began exploring an update to the City seal several years ago at the same time that the City began developing the new branding logos. As part of this process, staff provided an initial draft of an updated Chief Kotat’i seal to the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria (FIGR) for their input. The FIGR communicated to the City that they preferred that the new seal not include a likeness of a Native American. This led staff to discuss alternatives, and working with a local graphics art company, developed three general themes representing music, nature, and landmarks.
These three themes were presented to the public through an online survey in August 2022 to determine which direction residents wanted to go with the new seal design.
Based on the results of the community survey, the public largely supported a nature-based theme, generally represented in the concepts as an oak tree, with the second most popular theme being music, represented in the concepts with the statue of Jim Boggio in La Plaza Park. The prevailing sentiment was that oak trees are an important element, but only using an oak tree in the seal was already used by several cities in this area, including Windsor, Oakland, etc. While music was an important theme to many, the general sentiment was the symbol should be timeless and universal, while not tying to any particular person. There was also significant public comment encouraging the incorporation of Cotati’s hexagon layout into the seal to make it unique to Cotati.
Analysis/Discussion
On November 22, 2022, the City Council reviewed the public survey feedback on conceptual City seal options. As a result of that discussion, the City Council recommended that the graphic artist design a draft seal centering on a nature theme, with a hexagonal shape and potentially an element/texture to tie the seal to local Native history.
As a result, the graphic artist put together a draft seal that uses the hexagonal shape for the border and centers on themes of nature (represented by the Laguna de Santa Rosa and the hills/agriculture around Cotati) and music (represented by the bandstand in La Plaza Park). The draft seal is a rough hand drawn sketch to convey the layout and design intent, but the final version is intended to be in “scratch” art, similar to the style in the initial concepts. The goal of this draft seal is to get any final comments to move the art to final.
In addition, the attached options could strive for a subtle incorporation of native culture through incorporation of a border detail that is reminiscent of local Native American Indian basket weaving patterns. The potential designs include both the original simple dot design, as well a design that plays off the mosaic walls at 116/Old Redwood Highway, a design that incorporates the basket weave from the top of the mosaic walls, or other potential basket weave options to illustrate how this could look. The interior art will be static once complete, as it’s commissioned artwork, but the art around the seal border is flexible and can easily modified by our graphic artist now or in the future. A staff favorite is the basket weave pattern shown below, which was pulled from the 116/Old Redwood Highway mosaic wall. This is already part of Cotati’s public space and it is clearly identifiable as Native American.
It is important to keep in mind that this seal will generally be printed on official stationary, etc., at a small scale. Therefore, aside from perhaps some limited animal/plant elements that can be included explicitly or as a semi-hidden “easter egg”, it’s recommended to keep the content limited so that the seal clearly conveys the main elements at its intended scale.
Financial Considerations
If the seal includes minor revisions, no additional funding is expected to be required. However, if the theme is rejected leading to new iterations, it could significantly increase the cost, depending on the extent of additional work.
Environmental Issues
This action is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it is not a project which has a potential for resulting in either a direct physical change in the environment, or a reasonably foreseeable indirect physical change in the environment, pursuant to CEQA Guideline section 15378.
Attachments:
Draft Hand Sketched City Seal Options (DOCX)