Here’s the story behind those colorful bumper stickers on city of Bellingham vehicles
The city is putting a newly designed bumper sticker on its roughly 300 vehicles starting this week.
Called the “Welcome Wheel” by Bellingham graphic designer Brad Lockhart, who created it, the design is intended to be a visual representation that the city is welcoming and inclusive, according to outgoing Mayor Kelli Linville.
It’s not Lockhart’s first work on behalf of Bellingham. He designed the city’s flag and redesigned its logo.
“I was very happy with how the design turned out,” Linville said to The Bellingham Herald about the “Welcome Wheel.”
Linville has posted the design on her Facebook page, where it received mixed reviews.
The design shows an outer circle in a rainbow of colors, with the addition of black and brown segments.
The red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple segments are the same colors as the Safe Place program, which was launched by the Seattle Police Department in 2015.
That effort originally focused on crimes committed against people who ware lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning but has since expanded to include anyone who may have been a victim of a hate or bias crime, according to the Seattle police website.
The rainbow flag is the original symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender pride and their social movements.
The Safe Place program is meant to address low reporting of hate and bias incidents.
The colors for the new bumper stickers are tied into that program, Linville said, adding that she asked to have the colors black and brown added to make the “Welcome Wheel” more inclusive as a symbol.
The Bellingham Police Department expects to launch the Safe Place program in the city early in 2020.
The smaller circle inside the larger one borrows from the Bellingham flag. Its colors and symbols are:
▪ Blue for Bellingham Bay.
▪ Three wavy white lines that represent noisy waters, which is the Nooksack translation of the word Whatcom, Lockhart has said.
▪ Two white stars, one representing Lummi Nation and the other the Nooksack Tribe.
“We’re not perfect. But I’ve seen a lot of outpouring of support when we have incidences that happen here,” Linville said.
As for the idea of a circle, Linville said that, to her, that shape signifies continuity and inclusion, which is what she believes the community stands for, regardless of recent reports of hate crimes.
Bellingham police have investigated about 20 hate crimes this year.
“We’re not perfect,” Linville said, adding she’s seen a great deal of outpouring here from a community and city opposed to such incidents.
Lockhart received a $2,000 stipend from the Mayor’s Office to create the new bumper sticker, according to Linville.
“I wouldn’t have invested a lot of money in something like that,” Linville told The Bellingham Herald. “I’m glad we could do it cost-effectively and still get the message across.”
“The big investments we make are in the actual services that change people’s lives,” she said.
The stickers will be printed in-house and will be put on city of Bellingham vehicles, including police vehicles.
As for when the public can get it, that will take a little while longer.
“We will be making this design available to the public to download from our website for free in the next several weeks,” said Vanessa Blackburn, city spokeswoman. “As far as I know, there is not currently anywhere that people can purchase this.”
