Longtime readers may notice some changes to the website in coming weeks. Flyway is proud to unveil our new logo!

Flyway has used a number of designs and logos over its 20-year publication history, but none of them has ever quite seemed to work as a primary logo for the journal. When the current editors met with outgoing editors last spring to discuss Flyway’s direction for the coming year, one of the things that we all agreed on was that Flyway needed a clear visual symbol that could live up to the amazing content we publish here on the website every six weeks.

Last spring, outgoing Creative Director Audrey McCombs and I met with faculty and staff from the College of Design at Iowa State University, where Flyway is housed, to discuss potential logo ideas. Recent graduate Shelby Erickson volunteered to create a logo based around the sandhill crane, one of the continent’s largest and most impressive birds. During the spring and fall, sandhill cranes flock by the thousands to follow migration flyways across the plains and prairies of the Midwest, filling the sky with their distinctive (and beautiful) whirring cries—as fitting a symbol as we could imagine for a journal where we focus on the many ways that humans interact with their environments, both natural and built. In Shelby’s finished design, a writing quill flows into a sandhill crane in open flight, the natural and the imagined merging seamlessly.

We hope the new logo will become shorthand for everything that makes Flyway great: The talented writers and visual artists who submit their work to us, our environmental and place-based focus, and our commitment to bringing the best of both to you, our readers.

Thanks for coming with us on this journey.

Liz Giorgi
Creative Director

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