In 1970 David Leigh was invited to develop a new visual identity for the United States Deaf Skiers Association. As part of this, a new logo was sought, one that would be a memorable image for deaf skiers and also convey the seriousness and dignity of the group.
A key problem consisted of the need to create a symbol that was easily adaptable for a wide variety of use cases, from posters to letterheads, and all the way down to pin badges.
Leigh’s solution was the ‘Skimark’. This was composed of skiis pointing inwards and converging at a central point, then cropped into a snowflake-like circle, illustrating the unity of the association.
The logo was made adaptable through two different versions, a mark with 12 pairs of skis for small use cases such as the pins, and a logo composed of 24 pairs of skis for much larger use cases such as posters.
This scaling up and down of skiis placed emphasis on numbers, and thus members of the association, all focused on a single activity. A contrast of white and deep blue emphasised seasonality.
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