A new look for Colorado Snow

I started the “Colorado Snow Blog” back in 2006, mostly to document my own skiing adventures, and now five seasons and hundreds of thousands of pageviews later: I decided it was time to treat myself.

I always wanted a professional look and feel that kept some “personality” and “character”. Snow sports are both “grunge” (think terrain park, baggy pants, Icelantic skis) and “clean” (think an expensive resort, Spyder clothing). I’ve always felt like “Colorado Snow” fell somewhere in-between.

So, a couple months ago I reached out to designer Aaron Mahnke over at Wet Frog Studios and asked for him to help clean up the Colorado Snow logo. But first, some back story for posterity…

History

I decided to create the site back in 2006 and for it, I whipped together a quick logo to go with a gray and blue snow-colored website. I spent very little time thinking about it: use the red “C” from the Colorado state flag, and throw a snowflake in. Boom, done.

Two seasons later in 2008 I decided to upgrade the back-end of the site and found a new look that was a bit more blue. I decided to refresh the logo font and styles to be a bit more “modern”. In actuality, I ended up creating a “dated” hunk that didn’t stand the test of time.

In early 2009, I realized it was time to clean things up a bit. So, I simplified the logo (same font, with some “character”).

This was also a big period for social networks and needing avatars so I created the “square version” which, I feel, was the best looking thing most people would see in the Twitter feed for the next few years.

New Hotness

After a few days of back-and-forth with Aaron, he nailed it. He took my pre-existing mess, cleaned it up, did it right, and resulted in what you’ve come to see now. The new look of cosnow:

With the full-width banner on the blue background for the website:

And still, one of my favorite pieces of iconography on the web, the square “Colorado C” and “snowflake”:

If you haven’t poked around the site lately, stop by and take a peek: it works perfectly on mobile, tablet, and desktop browsers. Of course, you’ll find the beautiful new logo at the top.

“And it may be no big deal to you, But it’s a very big deal to me”
-Lyle Lovett