Monte Vista Christian School in Watsonville has hidden a secret in plain view in its new athletic logo — and once people find it, they love it.
MVCS student Dennis Yang can’t see it yet. He has been looking at his school’s newly designed athletic logo for about 30 seconds, when he begs, “Give me a hint.” He has heard there is something hidden there, so he moves in for a closer look.
With his nose almost touching the image, suddenly, the embedded surprise jumps out at him. In delight, Yang raises his hand to high-five a nearby administrator and says, “That’s awesome!”
“When people find it, they absolutely love it,” says Dr. Mitchell Salerno, the new Headmaster Elect at Monte Vista Christian School. From the time Salerno first visited the school, he heard something about the school mascot that deeply intrigued and inspired him: the Mustang may not have originally been referencing a horse — but instead the 1940s fighter plane.
“The way people talk about it sounds kind of like a legend or a myth,” said Salerno, “but we did some digging, and legend or not, it’s a great story.”
It was really a hunt. The research covered more than 90 years of history, going back to the founding of the school in 1926. MVCS administrators talked with alumni and teachers and flipped through stacks of old yearbooks. And while they did not uncover definitive proof that the Mustang was first a plane, they did piece together first-hand accounts, photographs, and campus maps as far back as the 1940s to reveal that airplanes once played a vital role at MVCS.
Steve Sharp, Headmaster, loves to tell this part of the story. He points toward the football field and says, “There was a runway and a hangar over there. Parents serving as missionaries used to drop off their children to board at Monte Vista, and then they would fly off to the mission field.”
Equally undeniable in the research was the school’s long tradition of horses. From the first Headmaster who rode one around campus, to today’s nationally known equestrian program, MVCS has pretty much always been in the saddle.
“Whether our mascot was originally supposed to be a horse or a plane, we found our school has a rich history of both,” Salerno explained, “and we just knew our logo redesign had to share that fact.”
The marriage of horse and plane moves MVCS into a league of companies with clever surprises in their logos. “We were looking to do something smart, subtle, and playful,” said Dave Johnson, MVCS Dean of Marketing and Communication. “Look at the Fed Ex logo with the hidden arrow, or the Minnesota Twins logo with the word “win” underlined. We are really excited about how this turned out.”
MVCS teamed with the design team from VIP Branding, but Salerno described the design breakthrough as the day Johnson transformed the horse’s eye into an airplane.
“It was inspired, almost magical,” Salerno said, “and everyone we started showing it to loved it as much as we did.”
Much like a “Where’s Waldo” book, Johnson has now started hiding the airplane in other school publications and materials so that the community can experience the delight of discovery again and again, just like Dennis did.