The story behind our logo design.
Our logo was designed and developed by local community member Amya West. Amya West is an artist and designer, and a recent Poughkeepsie High school graduate, with plans to attend the Columbia College of Art and Design in the Fall 2021 semester!
Amya has designed a virtual gallery for Dutchess 2021 Pride, the cover of a postcard for Vassar College's welcoming committee to new professors, and other local community-based outreach as well. In her personal work, she loves to create original characters and narratives for fantasy settings.
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Logo design and color mock-ups
After doing research, Amya West chose 3 African Adinkra symbols to incorporate into our logo design. The fawohodie indicates freedom, the epa means slavery, and the mmere dane means change.
CAS works to enact freedom and change from our history of slavery in order to create a more just world.
Thank you to David Wong from The Art Effect for mentoring Amya West through this creative process!
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Behind the colors
Orange is an African flag color that is less used but still present. It represents enthusiasm and is a mix between the energetic red, and bright, happy yellow. Different variations of orange to represent different tones of skin in Africa, religions, regions, and cultures.
Green, black, red and white are flag colors that you normally see represent African culture. Red stands for the blood shed by Africans who died in their fight for liberation, as well as the shared blood of the African people. Black represents Black people. Green represents natural fertility and the growth of Africa.
CAS members chimed in about the design and color selection during Amya’s process to decide on our final logo.