East Village logo captures San Jose business district’s funky vibe

It’s not easy to distill the vibe of a business district that’s so eclectic it’s hard to define, but San Jose graphic designer Theo Mendoza has pulled it off with a funky new logo for East Village, the rebranding of San Jose’s East Santa Clara Street Business District.

The new logo was unveiled during a little celebration Tuesday morning in front of the mural outside Vegan Bistro and Deli on North 10th and Santa Clara streets. The East Village logo gives off a throwback vibe — it feels like something out of the early ’70s to me — that’s more fun than you’d expect for a business district.

At first, Mendoza thought the logo needed to be more structured because it represented a business district, but after talking to the neighborhood merchants, he knew they weren’t looking for something slick and cookie-cutter.

“I took a step back and realized we’re branding a business association that’s catering to this community that wants to feel safe and wants to connect with each other,” said Mendoza, who was born and raised in San Jose. “We wanted them to buy into it, have a sense of pride behind it and then be able to feel comfortable being who they are and what they bring to the table.”

The logo’s letters are a mishmash of typefaces, mixing capitals and lower case. Sixteen green leaves in the upper corner represent the 16 blocks the district comprises along East Santa Clara Street, from Seventh to 22nd streets. The letters “SJ” encased in a red brick in the opposite corner stand for the brick-and-mortar storefronts that line the district.

In his month-long design process, Mendoza talked to the merchants in the district — many of the restaurants and stores in East Village are owned by entrepreneurs who are Vietnamese, Black, Latino, Cambodian, Korean or Chinese — and what he heard from them led him down a path away from stylized, and toward something family-friendly and light that still authentically still represented the businesses.

“Because I lined up all this information and connected with them in a way that we both understood what the goal was, once I showed them, it wasn’t a surprise,” he said.

Caleb Orozco, owner of the Last Round Tavern and vice chair of the business association, said he appreciated Mendoza’s collaborative process and questions that helped crystallize that the merchants stood for.

“He did a fantastic job. It’s fun, it’s whimsical, its colorful—but at the same time, it means business,” Orozco said. “It represents the growing and thriving that can happen here in East Village.”

POETRY SPEAKS: Mighty Mike McGee says this year’s 10th annual San Jose Poetry Festival, which opens Thursday and runs through the weekend, has a lineup that puts an emphasis on spoken word poetry.

The opening night event at the First Unitarian Church (160 N. Third St.) starts at 7 p.m. and will feature Jason Bayani, Jamie DeWolf, Wonder Dave and Lorenz Dumuk. There’ll be featured performances each night, as well as workshops and some daytime events, both in person and streamed online, with other presenters including Bao Phi, Rachel McKibbens, Arlene Biala, Sally Ashton and Tshaka Campbell.