Serving the city and beyond

This is the Article from the Orange County Register on Alexa McNabb's "Extreme Logo Makeover"

Event: Logo art for Meals on Wheels among projects by 5,000 volunteers.
By Samantha Gonzaga, Staff writer

LONG BEACH - What happens when about 25 artists, graphic designers and marketing experts collaborate to give a national nonprofit a visual makeover?
You get eight pieces of concept art for a logo to present to the city's Meals on Wheels chapter. And if the nonprofit's national board approves it, the logo will be used for all 4,000 chapters.
The Meals on Wheels project was organized by Collaboration Works!, a nonprofit collective of professionals who volunteer their time assisting businesses and nonprofits with branding. The group was among 5,000 volunteers who participated in Saturday's Serve Day, an annual event that draws together 100 nonprofits and 28 Los Angeles and Orange county churches from all denominations for one day of community service.
About 250 project sites were planned Saturday.
"We create an environment where artists could thrive," said Alexa McNabb, founder of Collaboration Works! "We achieve a lot in a few hours. Everyone leaves like they just had eight espressos."
Throughout the day, volunteers brainstormed, sketched and discussed the visual impact of the final selected concepts with equal measures of humor and thoughtful analysis.

Throughout the day, volunteers brainstormed, sketched and discussed the visual impact of the final selected concepts with equal measures of humor and thoughtful analysis.

McNabb's group is not new to Serve Day. Last year, its volunteer professionals designed a logo for the Assistance League's Howard

Asian Art Collection, a small museum that houses 2,700 late 19th and early 20th century Chinese and Pan-Asian artifacts.

Previous Serve Day projects have designed the logo for Collaboration Works! itself and provided marketing, advertising and promotion workshops for "The State of the Art Project," a nonprofit film studio for the city's youth.
The challenge presented by Meals on Wheels this year was creating a design that not only conveys the group's service, but the compassion underscoring it, said Brian Chung, a marketing representative for Kawai America.
"We're really uniting people here," he said of the Serve Day exercise. "We're uniting people who want to serve."
Jeff Parker, a Long Beach resident and graphic designer, agreed. "I'm coming into this as someone who wants to serve the city."
Samantha Gonzaga can be reached at samantha.gonzaga@presstelegram.com or (562) 499-1284.