About UsThe Tijuana River Valley Equestrian Association (TRVEA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that was founded in 1986 to promote and protect the horse and rider experience in the wonderful Tijuana River Valley.
Today, TRVEA is made up of diverse individuals and families who participate in every type of equestrian sport there is—trail, dressage, western, hunter/jumper, endurance, and more. Everyone is welcome! We are located on the US and Mexico border, west of Interstate 5, and bounded by the Pacific Ocean. We have 4,000 acres of parkland to ride in with a variety of different terrain. Between the shaded canopy forest, high mesas with views for miles, the estuary, the riverbed, and beaches for miles, there's so much wildlife to see and trails to explore. |
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Our Goals
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To promote camaraderie among Tijuana River Valley equestrians. |
To protect and preserve Tijuana River Valley natural resources. |
To sponsor youth participation in equestrian activities. |
To maintain and preserve all public and equestrian trails. |
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To assist, inform, and educate for all things equestrian. |
To promote the usefulness of horses in public service. |
To promote assistance-patrols that support all regional parks. |
To promote and protect the horse and rider experience in the wonderful Tijuana River Valley. |
About the TRVEA Logo
Have you ever wondered how artists create truly awesome designs? Read this fascinating interview with Mary Johnson, the artist behind our logo, to discover how she developed the concept for the incredible TRVEA logo.
Q: How did you come to design the TRVEA logo?
At the December 2006 general meeting, it was mentioned that TRVEA needed a logo to use on its stationery, etc. and that whoever had any ideas or wanted to help should contact Mary Christensen. I hadn’t been active in TRVEA, but I wanted to contribute something to the organization, and I like to draw horses, so I volunteered to sketch some ideas.
Q: What considerations did you feel were essential to the TRVEA logo?
A logo is a graphic emissary of the organization it represents. With symbols, pictures or stylized lettering, it creates an image in the mind of the observer of what the organization is about. It's a graphic shorthand. I wanted something simple and strong, yet picturesque, that would portray what is special about our equestrian organization in the unique valley we inhabit; a logo that would illustrate TRVEA’s byline: “Horses in Harmony with Habitat.”
To start, I had to choose between an emphasis on letters or an emphasis on pictures. Ford and IBM use recognizable, stylized letters as logos. Toyota and Hyundai use abstracted letters as the company symbol. This direction did not seem right to me for TRVEA because it would convey little about us to anyone who did not know us; it didn’t have ‘heart.’
Foremost, we are an Equestrian organization! We are in the Tijuana River Valley. What could be unique about our logo to differentiate us from “Bonita Valley,” “Lakeside” or any other equestrian group? What would catch the eye of educators and politicians and scientists and the general public that would make them notice and remember us? What would celebrate something our members could relate to and be proud of? What would convey our mission of standing for horses in harmony with habitat?
Above all, the logo needed to include a horse because we are an equestrian organization! Since I don’t draw people well, drawing a person on the horse’s back did not excite me as an artist! Plus there is the tricky consideration of whether that person would be male/female/adult/child/Western/English/MAU/Vaquero or what?
I absolutely didn’t want the sterile circle-on-stick-body-with-no-neck-no-hands used on some street signs! For all these reasons, I decided to focus on the horse, shared by all of us as equestrians, rather than trying to portray humans in our logo.
The instructions were to try and convey the spirit of TRVEA’s byline: “Horses in Harmony with Habitat:” TRVEA, supports the presence of horses in the Valley and stands for horses being in harmony with the habitat. We do this because it is the moral high ground. We realize that the various forces that have moved horses out of most of San Diego County may well attempt to move them out of our Tijuana River Valley unless we stand for our horses and our show our equestrian selves to be good, valuable, harmonious, contributing members of this special place.
Q: Did you eliminate any earlier ideas as design started? How many iterations did you sketch before you felt you found the right feel, content, and look?
The creative process is exploratory, fun, frustrating and often messy. I played with a lot of ideas.
At first, I tried to cram everything in: There was a horse, and a Heron in a meadow looking at each other over a creek with hills and sunrise in the background in a three-sided frame with “horses” “harmony” and “habitat” spelled out around it. Sweet picture and the message was clear, but it lacked “punch” and missed our valley’s unique and vital connection to the sea. It would be a nice ranch sign.
So I radically simplified the idea down to an abstracted bit of wood fence in the form of an “H.” The H represented horse, harmony, habitat. I used a Japanese brush style for the lines to honor historic TRV Japanese farms. A Mexican Jay perched on the upright post. Mmmmm, all sorts of wider cultural and natural nuances. The little number “3” (meaning ‘cubed’) was raised to one side of the “H” gate as shorthand for horses/habitat/humanity….Voila, a very simple design, but totally obscure and waaaay too abstract! It would always need explaining, and I’d LOST the HORSE!
Back to the drawing board.
Knowing the logo was needed for stationery, I tried to visualize the whole piece of paper. I played with a background of partly grayed-out maps of the valley trails with little horses and riders going along them. TRVEA spelled out across the top in attractive typestyle. Interesting idea, but not a logo.
Next, still with the logo/stationery idea, I tried an empty ‘scroll’ approach, leaving the center space for messages. In the margins, I drew a mini rendition of our habitat’s outstanding features: the cresting waves (with dolphins), the river (with fish), the marsh (with egrets), the trails (with riders and horses), and so on. Most people we correspond with have little to no idea where/what the Tijuana River Valley is so I figured this would give us a sense of place. Still not a logo.
I doodled a few other ideas that went nowhere. Nothing strong enough, nothing catchy. Just nice horsey pictures. I was getting frustrated. I should mention that I tend always to have too many projects going at once and I hadn’t worked on this logo consistently soon enough or long enough to get my head and heart around it completely. The deadline by which I’d promised to give the Board some preliminary ideas was alarmingly near.
To lighten up, I sketched something silly and fun: an anthropomorphic rendition of a horse wearing a fancy sombrero, sitting and strumming a guitar at a campfire party with native wildlife all around: dancing lizards, a fish chorus, rabbits roasting marshmallows, etc. It was a totally wild and crazy scene with musical notes wafting across it and TRVEA’s initials on the drum set played by a Great Blue Heron. Maybe you’ll see it on a T-shirt one of these years. It was certainly no logo, but it was fun, and that somehow helped clear my head.
So I got serious, and I got simple, and I got silent, and I connected with my heart and my guts on what I’ve found special in the TRV about horses, harmony, and habitat.
HORSES: I came to the TRV because I was looking for a ranch that would allow me to board my Rocky Mountain stallion, who is a very good-natured fellow, but a stallion nonetheless. I found a welcoming home for him and my mares at Suncoast. So I drew my stallion who brought me to the TRV! With his chiseled, classic head, strong body, and wavy mane he is an excellent model! I kept his form circular and compact, and only portrayed the head, neck, and chest to keep it simple. I had the ‘HORSE’!
HABITAT: I love that our Valley has trails that lead to the beach and the ocean! I remembered the day I rode with friends on the beach, and we saw a school of dolphins playing in the ocean. In one moment, three dolphins surfed side by side through a cresting wave with the sunlight illuminating them! That was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. Although it happened in a flash, it is burned into my memory better than if I’d had a camera. So I drew a dolphin leaping alongside my stallion. Dolphins represent our ocean and have great public appeal, too.
Now I needed something to represent the marsh, the sky, the river, something to connect all of this together, make it ‘work.’ I didn’t have much space left if this logo wasn’t going to look like the overblown T-shirt design!
I remembered a day when I’d seen a Great Blue Heron standing in the Thoroughbred mares’ pasture at Suncoast. Not knowing much about birds, I thought perhaps he was displaced by the storms (my husband said they come inland during rough weather) or the polluted river (likely, but ultimately not the issue here). Anyway, I was feeling sorry for that bird and mildly guilty about all us humans/horses displacing the native fauna, etc. I really had quite a story going in my head about this poor bird’s situation!
Next day, the ol’ Heron was back in the pasture again, standing stock still for the longest time, just as he had the day before. I went on with my horse care. Suddenly there was a flurry out in the pasture, and I turned to see the Heron rising on powerful wings with a fat gopher dangling from his beak by its back leg. Oh my! Heron gets a meal, and digging varmint who damages plants and precious horses’ legs is eliminated at the same time! The whole cycle was so much more positive than my dire first imaginings! Here was an example that horse-keeping could be in harmony with habitat. So, between the bulk of the horse and the solid body of the dolphin, I inserted the slender form of the Heron.
HARMONY: I feel very strongly that we need to create horse-and-human spaces that are harmonious with the wider land, air, and sea around us. The pressures of society pushing horses farther out and away from ever-expanding cities do not bode well for the future of our beloved creatures. I grew up in Chula Vista when it was still partly farmed. On at least on one nearby farm, a horse named Diamond pulled Mr. Avery’s plow through the rich dirt of the tomato fields. That entire farm has long since become apartments and parking lots, as has most of coastal Southern California. The TRV is one of the last vestiges of our earlier history with horses and one of the last places where native creatures can thrive, if we clean it up sufficiently for them to do so.
As equestrians, we celebrate the historical importance of the horse. As horse lovers, we understand the importance of the human-horse dialog in our increasingly urban and mechanical world.
For harmony in the graphics, I faced the three creatures in the same direction as if they were leaping together, just their forequarters and heads showing. I wanted to convey power, unity, and grace. The mane of the horse swirls like an ocean current. For printing reasons, the slender bird between the horse and dolphin is white (Snowy Egret or White Heron similar to a Great Blue Heron) because the logo will sometimes be printed black/grey/white; the bird separates the horse and dolphin, both larger, darker shapes.
Q: Once you settled on the final idea, what new challenges did you face?
At that point, my biggest constraint was that I was running out of time before the Board meeting and I was in LA, sitting with a friend at Kaiser’s outpatient skin cancer treatment center. I was sketching on typing paper on a book on my lap when I came up with the ultimate idea of horse/bird/dolphin. I got a pretty good rendition, but I couldn’t remember exactly how to draw a dolphin’s snout. My friend, also an artist, wasn’t sure either. In LA, like in NY, you can find virtually everything you need it is said. I looked in all the magazines. Nothing. So I said, out loud: “Does anyone here know how to draw a dolphin?”
Sure enough, sharing the waiting room with us was a Hollywood set designer who just happened to have worked on things involving dolphins. She was intrigued and graciously sketched in the little indentation of the forehead/nose that made it look like a true dolphin after all. Others in the waiting room were taking an interest in the project and wanted to know about TRVEA. It was a welcome diversion from the reason most of them were there, and I was glad for their thoughts too! For a little time there, we had real community spirit and sharing (and my friend’s cancer was successfully treated)…I like to think TRVEA will always bring people together wherever we take it!
I called Mary Christensen and told her I’d meet her in Chula Vista at 4 and, blessedly, the traffic out of LA cooperated! That night she took all the sketches to the Board meeting where they were roundly discussed over pizza (nice symmetry). The horse/bird/dolphin was the unanimous logo favorite, but there will be uses for the other ideas, too. Ideas are never wasted: they are just paths or byways to other ideas and always good to have.
Q: When finished, did the final design come out as you first envisioned not only the message but the content and actual artwork?
Once the Board settled on the design, I took the pencil drawing to Harden (James) Miers who is a veritable genius at converting pencil drawings into computer compatible graphics. Because everything nowadays is done digitally, it is important to set up the artwork so that it will translate into a wide variety of applications and ‘read’ well in all of them from the digital format. Hardy was true to the character of my sketch, even leaving some expression in the eyes which is not always easy to do when things are simplified. He added a bit of a wave curl that enhances the ocean feel and flow. I’m happy with the result which is not always the case when original art is translated into electronic format graphics.
I look forward to seeing TRVEA’s new logo in all sorts of applications. I hope the logo and these background stories will inspire other members to share their experiences in the TRV and, of course, get more involved in TRVEA!
Q: How did you come to design the TRVEA logo?
At the December 2006 general meeting, it was mentioned that TRVEA needed a logo to use on its stationery, etc. and that whoever had any ideas or wanted to help should contact Mary Christensen. I hadn’t been active in TRVEA, but I wanted to contribute something to the organization, and I like to draw horses, so I volunteered to sketch some ideas.
Q: What considerations did you feel were essential to the TRVEA logo?
A logo is a graphic emissary of the organization it represents. With symbols, pictures or stylized lettering, it creates an image in the mind of the observer of what the organization is about. It's a graphic shorthand. I wanted something simple and strong, yet picturesque, that would portray what is special about our equestrian organization in the unique valley we inhabit; a logo that would illustrate TRVEA’s byline: “Horses in Harmony with Habitat.”
To start, I had to choose between an emphasis on letters or an emphasis on pictures. Ford and IBM use recognizable, stylized letters as logos. Toyota and Hyundai use abstracted letters as the company symbol. This direction did not seem right to me for TRVEA because it would convey little about us to anyone who did not know us; it didn’t have ‘heart.’
Foremost, we are an Equestrian organization! We are in the Tijuana River Valley. What could be unique about our logo to differentiate us from “Bonita Valley,” “Lakeside” or any other equestrian group? What would catch the eye of educators and politicians and scientists and the general public that would make them notice and remember us? What would celebrate something our members could relate to and be proud of? What would convey our mission of standing for horses in harmony with habitat?
Above all, the logo needed to include a horse because we are an equestrian organization! Since I don’t draw people well, drawing a person on the horse’s back did not excite me as an artist! Plus there is the tricky consideration of whether that person would be male/female/adult/child/Western/English/MAU/Vaquero or what?
I absolutely didn’t want the sterile circle-on-stick-body-with-no-neck-no-hands used on some street signs! For all these reasons, I decided to focus on the horse, shared by all of us as equestrians, rather than trying to portray humans in our logo.
The instructions were to try and convey the spirit of TRVEA’s byline: “Horses in Harmony with Habitat:” TRVEA, supports the presence of horses in the Valley and stands for horses being in harmony with the habitat. We do this because it is the moral high ground. We realize that the various forces that have moved horses out of most of San Diego County may well attempt to move them out of our Tijuana River Valley unless we stand for our horses and our show our equestrian selves to be good, valuable, harmonious, contributing members of this special place.
Q: Did you eliminate any earlier ideas as design started? How many iterations did you sketch before you felt you found the right feel, content, and look?
The creative process is exploratory, fun, frustrating and often messy. I played with a lot of ideas.
At first, I tried to cram everything in: There was a horse, and a Heron in a meadow looking at each other over a creek with hills and sunrise in the background in a three-sided frame with “horses” “harmony” and “habitat” spelled out around it. Sweet picture and the message was clear, but it lacked “punch” and missed our valley’s unique and vital connection to the sea. It would be a nice ranch sign.
So I radically simplified the idea down to an abstracted bit of wood fence in the form of an “H.” The H represented horse, harmony, habitat. I used a Japanese brush style for the lines to honor historic TRV Japanese farms. A Mexican Jay perched on the upright post. Mmmmm, all sorts of wider cultural and natural nuances. The little number “3” (meaning ‘cubed’) was raised to one side of the “H” gate as shorthand for horses/habitat/humanity….Voila, a very simple design, but totally obscure and waaaay too abstract! It would always need explaining, and I’d LOST the HORSE!
Back to the drawing board.
Knowing the logo was needed for stationery, I tried to visualize the whole piece of paper. I played with a background of partly grayed-out maps of the valley trails with little horses and riders going along them. TRVEA spelled out across the top in attractive typestyle. Interesting idea, but not a logo.
Next, still with the logo/stationery idea, I tried an empty ‘scroll’ approach, leaving the center space for messages. In the margins, I drew a mini rendition of our habitat’s outstanding features: the cresting waves (with dolphins), the river (with fish), the marsh (with egrets), the trails (with riders and horses), and so on. Most people we correspond with have little to no idea where/what the Tijuana River Valley is so I figured this would give us a sense of place. Still not a logo.
I doodled a few other ideas that went nowhere. Nothing strong enough, nothing catchy. Just nice horsey pictures. I was getting frustrated. I should mention that I tend always to have too many projects going at once and I hadn’t worked on this logo consistently soon enough or long enough to get my head and heart around it completely. The deadline by which I’d promised to give the Board some preliminary ideas was alarmingly near.
To lighten up, I sketched something silly and fun: an anthropomorphic rendition of a horse wearing a fancy sombrero, sitting and strumming a guitar at a campfire party with native wildlife all around: dancing lizards, a fish chorus, rabbits roasting marshmallows, etc. It was a totally wild and crazy scene with musical notes wafting across it and TRVEA’s initials on the drum set played by a Great Blue Heron. Maybe you’ll see it on a T-shirt one of these years. It was certainly no logo, but it was fun, and that somehow helped clear my head.
So I got serious, and I got simple, and I got silent, and I connected with my heart and my guts on what I’ve found special in the TRV about horses, harmony, and habitat.
HORSES: I came to the TRV because I was looking for a ranch that would allow me to board my Rocky Mountain stallion, who is a very good-natured fellow, but a stallion nonetheless. I found a welcoming home for him and my mares at Suncoast. So I drew my stallion who brought me to the TRV! With his chiseled, classic head, strong body, and wavy mane he is an excellent model! I kept his form circular and compact, and only portrayed the head, neck, and chest to keep it simple. I had the ‘HORSE’!
HABITAT: I love that our Valley has trails that lead to the beach and the ocean! I remembered the day I rode with friends on the beach, and we saw a school of dolphins playing in the ocean. In one moment, three dolphins surfed side by side through a cresting wave with the sunlight illuminating them! That was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. Although it happened in a flash, it is burned into my memory better than if I’d had a camera. So I drew a dolphin leaping alongside my stallion. Dolphins represent our ocean and have great public appeal, too.
Now I needed something to represent the marsh, the sky, the river, something to connect all of this together, make it ‘work.’ I didn’t have much space left if this logo wasn’t going to look like the overblown T-shirt design!
I remembered a day when I’d seen a Great Blue Heron standing in the Thoroughbred mares’ pasture at Suncoast. Not knowing much about birds, I thought perhaps he was displaced by the storms (my husband said they come inland during rough weather) or the polluted river (likely, but ultimately not the issue here). Anyway, I was feeling sorry for that bird and mildly guilty about all us humans/horses displacing the native fauna, etc. I really had quite a story going in my head about this poor bird’s situation!
Next day, the ol’ Heron was back in the pasture again, standing stock still for the longest time, just as he had the day before. I went on with my horse care. Suddenly there was a flurry out in the pasture, and I turned to see the Heron rising on powerful wings with a fat gopher dangling from his beak by its back leg. Oh my! Heron gets a meal, and digging varmint who damages plants and precious horses’ legs is eliminated at the same time! The whole cycle was so much more positive than my dire first imaginings! Here was an example that horse-keeping could be in harmony with habitat. So, between the bulk of the horse and the solid body of the dolphin, I inserted the slender form of the Heron.
HARMONY: I feel very strongly that we need to create horse-and-human spaces that are harmonious with the wider land, air, and sea around us. The pressures of society pushing horses farther out and away from ever-expanding cities do not bode well for the future of our beloved creatures. I grew up in Chula Vista when it was still partly farmed. On at least on one nearby farm, a horse named Diamond pulled Mr. Avery’s plow through the rich dirt of the tomato fields. That entire farm has long since become apartments and parking lots, as has most of coastal Southern California. The TRV is one of the last vestiges of our earlier history with horses and one of the last places where native creatures can thrive, if we clean it up sufficiently for them to do so.
As equestrians, we celebrate the historical importance of the horse. As horse lovers, we understand the importance of the human-horse dialog in our increasingly urban and mechanical world.
For harmony in the graphics, I faced the three creatures in the same direction as if they were leaping together, just their forequarters and heads showing. I wanted to convey power, unity, and grace. The mane of the horse swirls like an ocean current. For printing reasons, the slender bird between the horse and dolphin is white (Snowy Egret or White Heron similar to a Great Blue Heron) because the logo will sometimes be printed black/grey/white; the bird separates the horse and dolphin, both larger, darker shapes.
Q: Once you settled on the final idea, what new challenges did you face?
At that point, my biggest constraint was that I was running out of time before the Board meeting and I was in LA, sitting with a friend at Kaiser’s outpatient skin cancer treatment center. I was sketching on typing paper on a book on my lap when I came up with the ultimate idea of horse/bird/dolphin. I got a pretty good rendition, but I couldn’t remember exactly how to draw a dolphin’s snout. My friend, also an artist, wasn’t sure either. In LA, like in NY, you can find virtually everything you need it is said. I looked in all the magazines. Nothing. So I said, out loud: “Does anyone here know how to draw a dolphin?”
Sure enough, sharing the waiting room with us was a Hollywood set designer who just happened to have worked on things involving dolphins. She was intrigued and graciously sketched in the little indentation of the forehead/nose that made it look like a true dolphin after all. Others in the waiting room were taking an interest in the project and wanted to know about TRVEA. It was a welcome diversion from the reason most of them were there, and I was glad for their thoughts too! For a little time there, we had real community spirit and sharing (and my friend’s cancer was successfully treated)…I like to think TRVEA will always bring people together wherever we take it!
I called Mary Christensen and told her I’d meet her in Chula Vista at 4 and, blessedly, the traffic out of LA cooperated! That night she took all the sketches to the Board meeting where they were roundly discussed over pizza (nice symmetry). The horse/bird/dolphin was the unanimous logo favorite, but there will be uses for the other ideas, too. Ideas are never wasted: they are just paths or byways to other ideas and always good to have.
Q: When finished, did the final design come out as you first envisioned not only the message but the content and actual artwork?
Once the Board settled on the design, I took the pencil drawing to Harden (James) Miers who is a veritable genius at converting pencil drawings into computer compatible graphics. Because everything nowadays is done digitally, it is important to set up the artwork so that it will translate into a wide variety of applications and ‘read’ well in all of them from the digital format. Hardy was true to the character of my sketch, even leaving some expression in the eyes which is not always easy to do when things are simplified. He added a bit of a wave curl that enhances the ocean feel and flow. I’m happy with the result which is not always the case when original art is translated into electronic format graphics.
I look forward to seeing TRVEA’s new logo in all sorts of applications. I hope the logo and these background stories will inspire other members to share their experiences in the TRV and, of course, get more involved in TRVEA!
