ALBUQUERQUE – The New Mexico Lottery unveils a new logo today.
“Our new logo keeps the iconic roadrunner because the bird is so important to the image of both the state and the lottery,” said New Mexico Lottery CEO David Barden.
In the new interpretation, the roadrunner logo has been fine-tuned for digital media, an environment that didn’t exist when the lottery was created 18 years ago.
“We’re entering a new era of great new games and fun promotions and our logo will help us tell that story to players whether they’re in stores, watching TV, boarding a transit bus or checking mobile apps,” Barden said.
A Logo for a Billboard and a Smart Phone
The logo was created by Joby Elliott, 28, who works for the lottery as a graphic designer. Before joining the lottery in 2008, Elliott attended the University of New Mexico on a Legislative Lottery Scholarship. The Socorro native studied studio art.
Above: Joby Elliot, graphic designer for NM Lottery and creator of the new NM Lottery logo
“I owe my education and my career to a Legislative Lottery Scholarship,” Elliott said. “If I can help the lottery be successful, then I can help all the college students following me be successful, too.”
Elliott said the design was one of 12 rough concepts he presented to CEO Barden and the lottery’s marketing staff.
“This design stood out because it is familiar, but simpler and more compelling,” Elliott said. “It will work whether it’s 10-feet tall on a billboard or a quarter inch long on the screen of a smart phone.”
The design is a refresh of the lottery’s previous logo created in 1996. It featured multi-colored confetti raining down on a highly detailed roadrunner. Under the bird, an “old-west” typeface made the New Mexico Lottery’s name appear to have been chiseled into a weathered wooden plank. When the logo was shrunk to fit small formats such as Facebook profile pics or mobile phone apps, all those details became difficult to recognize.
In Elliott’s reinterpretation, the iconic roadrunner is on the run. Details depicting the roadrunner’s feathers have been eliminated to streamline the bird’s profile and suggest forward movement. An elongated oval spiral represents the blur of the bird’s running legs. The wooden plank has been replaced by a raft of rolling lottery balls to further enhance a feeling that the bird is going places. A sans-serif typeface makes the New Mexico Lottery’s identity easier to read.
“The design is clean, bold and communicates a high-energy business,” Elliott said.
And just as importantly, the new logo is “flexible.”
“It works well in a vertical, horizontal or animated format and we can use whatever color we need to make it pop off the page or the screen,” he said.
The lottery will roll out the logo over the next several months.
Legislative Lottery Scholarships
Since 1996, the New Mexico Lottery has raised $613.4 million for education and more than 90,000 students have attended college on Legislative Lottery Scholarships.
More information about Legislative Lottery Scholarships is available at www.nmlottery.com.