An Evolution of American Whitewater’s Look and Feel

American Whitewater has an incredible, storied history of river stewardship success over the past nearly 70 years. Our shared victories have not only benefited the whitewater recreation community, but truly all those communities whose rivers run through them. In an effort to continue this success and to further recognize our organization as the primary advocate for the preservation and protection of whitewater rivers throughout the United States, we’d like to be the first to introduce you to our new visual identity. A true evolution in the look and feel of American Whitewater that took place over the last year, largely as a volunteer project.

Our new visual identity consists of a new logo, a fresh color palette, and a collection of modern  fonts to form a cohesive brand identity system. Our new logo design is bold, energetic, and highly legible at all sizes. It consists of two components that work together as one unit: The river rune brand mark and our name (aka, the word mark). The river rune symbolizes our commitment to river stewardship across all different types of rivers, for the benefit of all Americans, and to the quantity and quality of the water that fills our rivers itself. The word mark identifies our well recognized organization and calls to mind our past success in our mission to protect and restore America’s whitewater rivers and to enhance opportunities to enjoy them safely. 

Evocative of our nation’s rivers, our new distinct color palette will be another way to identify American Whitewater. Our Aqua and Deep Marine Blue colors appear in our new logo and will also be featured across our brand ecosystem in a variety of tints to make our visual identity resonate. Our new typography system (read: fancy new fonts) is bold and assertive but also spirited and welcoming with curves that bring to mind the twists and turns of the rivers we all love and enjoy. We will utilize these modern fonts to keep our messaging simple, direct, and memorable.

We’re letting you, our community, know about our new visual identity first! Look for the new elements of our visual identity to slowly but surely begin to appear across our messaging and communications starting today, and to see our full new visual identity in place in early 2023. Special thanks to the amazing work of Scott Lewis at Parts & Labor Strategy and Design for his incredible volunteer efforts in this project and to Patagonia for their generous support of the Catchafire platform, a place where skilled volunteers and nonprofits can connect to make great things happen.