Monterey Unveils New Town Logo

Monterey unveiled its new town logo at the Bee Rock Overlook Wednesday.

The design, which depicts the bluffs, was developed between a partnership of local businesses, past and present city officials and Tennessee Tech. Mayor JJ Reels said it is exciting to finally introduce the community to the logo after months of work.

“Everybody worked really well together,” Reels said. “The partnership between the community members and Tennessee Tech is what made everything happen. And to see their students that did all the research and took the information and made it into what is coming out of this is what makes it even more special.”

Cultural Administrator Rafferty Cleary said the logo represents the beginning of the town’s future endeavors to continue tourism growth.

“It’s a point in time where we can really start putting into action several different strategies to help promote our town to draw in more tourism,” Cleary said. “More visitors equals more dollars for our community, and so, this is a good starting point and of course, we’ve got a whole lot of plans put in place in the new budgeting process to get this rolling. So, we’re extremely happy to get to do this today.”

The logo project was made possible through Tech’s Center of Rural Innovation. Director Michael Aikens said working with Monterey during this process was an amazing experience.

“Being able to have our education and the community come together like this, work together and build something new collaboratively, I can’t say enough about it,” Aikens said. “What we’ve got is this new logo. We’ve got a brand. It’s bigger than just brand. It’s all about that collaboration.”

Three Tennessee Tech students worked together to create the digital assets and communication strategies for the rebranding. PhD Student Vincent Okot said his role focused on the qualitative research aspect.

“Especially with the logo, I did a qualtric analysis,” Okot said. “So, we came up with the branding colors for what we would think represents Monterey. Of course, we worked with them to come up with that, and then, once we decided the few colors they liked, we came and gave them the information.”

Merchandise with the new logo will be available at the Monterey Depot in the coming weeks.