ONE-PS sadly notes the September 18, 2020, passing of Nat Reed, creator of the ONE-PS logo.  Nat was a local graphic artist who passed away September 18th of ALS. He was a long-time resident of our Racquet Club Estates neighborhood. He had deep neighborhood connections and he significantly shaped our organization’s identity.

Nat had a gallery of his work on North Palm Canyon and his most popular subjects were colorful mid-century and tiki-inspired paintings—a natural for Palm Springs. But when our organization adopted the ONE-PS name in 2015, he departed from this style to create our logo.

The ONE-PS logo is elegant, but also thoughtful and sophisticated because it communicates so much in its apparent simplicity.

• The entire organization is placed symbolically “all under one roof.”
• The word “ONE” visually suggests the upper floor of a home—the basic unit of “neighborhood”. The lower-floor letters, “PS”, were custom-designed by Nat specifically for this project. He made them taper at the bottom to proportion them to the graphic, but also to suggest something growing from the ground and hinting at of our grass roots commitment.
• He expresses all this with only four design elements using two simple colors. This makes our logo memorable, easy to take in at a quick glance, and inexpensive to reproduce in a variety of media.

Over all, it’s a thoughtful, beautiful, and hard-working design entirely of Nat’s creation.

Nat also designed the Racquet Club Estates blade sign as well as other identity projects for his neighborhood, including polo shirts and Modernism Week tour brochures.

With Nat’s passing, Palm Springs’ neighborhoods initiative has lost a cornerstone contributor.

                                                                     Eric Chiel