85. ENVISION/METEOR
In designing the identity for Stone Mountain Park’s annual pumpkin festival, Envision found a surprisingly tough nut to crack. Designer Wendy Weiner had never expected that simply using pumpkins could pose so many potential design ideas. Add to that the technical and symbolic challenges —wrapping a 60-foot train that circles historic Stone Mountain, the park’s most traffi cked feature—and one thing, at least, became clear: The design would either hit the target straight-on, or flop publicly.

“We had half a dozen concepts,” remarks Weiner. “In one, the letters look like they’re blowing off the train, because it’s going so fast. Another one drew from pumpkin photographs. But these were all too adult; [the design] had to come back to a child’s vision. Imagine the train coming around the bend, and it’s so colorful, so massive, it’s magical. This design captures that exuberance.” Weiner gathered pumpkin pictures from fairy-tale anthologies and created a color-drenched closeup of pumpkins in a highly illustrative style. Outlined in purple, the letters pop from far distances with a classic, yet crisply modern feel. Perhaps the most telling memory was Weiner’s own recollection of riding the train as a child from Charlotte, N.C.: “At some point I had let those memories go. But now we had a chance to revamp that experience, bring it back.” Jude Stewart