U graphic artist makes new welcome signs for state

David Meikle’s art has been seen on campus for 14 years, but now it will be available for millions to view.

Meikle created Christmas cards for U President Michael Young’s office and posters for the U football team’s Las Vegas Bowl game seven years ago. Now the Utah Office of Tourism has hired Meikle to re-create welcome billboards along Utah’s borders.

“They wanted to try something that showed a little more of what’s inside the state,” he said.

Meikle made seven designs, one for each main entrance to the state. His creations include pictures of Arches National Park, Lake Powell, Zion National Park, the Wasatch Mountains, a skier and a dinosaur.
He said the most challenging design was Promontory Summit, where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads joined tracks in 1869.

“They gave me a photo with all sorts of colors,” Meikle said. “They weren’t really keen on how I’d interpret that so I took all the color out and really simplified the shapes.”

To create his designs, Meikle makes a sketch from a reference photo. He breaks the sketch into different shapes and scans them to his computer, then fills the shapes with color and fits them together one at a time.

Meikle developed this technique about seven years ago.

“I went to national parks and they had these posters that were reproductions of travel posters made in the ’30s,” he said. “I knew from my experience with Adobe Illustrator I could do something similar.”

The project was a collaborative effort with art directors and other designers, Meikle said.

Struck, a design agency, hired Meikle to design the billboards for the Office of Tourism.

“We really liked his style,” said Mark Rawlins, associate creative director for Struck. “He had a fun, sort of retro style we thought would be graphically conducive to doing these road signs.”

Rawlins said which of the seven billboard designs tourists will see will be based on the landmark nearest to where they enter the state.

Chad Davis, special projects coordinator for the Office of Tourism, said the designs will have a positive impact on tourism.

“It’s how we make our first impression,” he said. “It’s important we got the message right.”

Meikle is working on eight projects right now and has a large stack of others he plans to start.

About 250 million people are expected to see the billboards in the next 10 to 12 years.

The skier design was put up by the Mirror Lake Highway that heads through Wasatch-Cache National Forest near the Uinta Mountains. The rest are expected to be up by spring.

Meikle also made pennants to match the billboards, which are being sold by the Office of Tourism.

j.winston@chronicle.utah.edu

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