Julie Ann Bertram
Special to the Tribune
The new Field Township sign, revived by Field artist Howie Longfellow, was officially unveiled on September 21. “In true Howie nature, he went above and beyond by donating his time and expertise to recreate the design, making the colours pop even more with improvements to the original artwork,” lauded municipal officials in a release that day.
Longfellow described the process, “When we’d done the original sign in the mid-to-late 90s, before amalgamation, it was the old township crest that was on their letterhead. There was a lot of work done with Wayne LeBelle and the FRED [Field Regional Economic Development] committee when there were discussions about amalgamation, he brought it up that we should get this township logo up. The original design is quite old, I’m not sure who did it, but this is a replication of that. I added more depth to the images, like the shadowing behind the old mill, and putting a little glowing light in the tent, adding gradients for the sunset, and trying to get that winter feel with the purple gradient. There was a bit of a font change too. I didn’t want to change it too much, to keep it as original as possible. There was the name of the original sign company on the snow machine, so I wondered what to put there, and I thought ‘Field, Fantastique’… so I put the word Fantastique to replace it.”
