Who is that man with the shovel in Andover?
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Big plans for Wichita suburb
Andover has been known as a bedroom community of Wichita for years, but that’s changing, especially thanks to the city’s new Heritage development.
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There’s a man that visitors to the new Heritage development in Andover are going to be seeing a lot of, but he’s not a living one.
It’s a farmer who is represented on logos and monuments throughout the development — much of which is a former cow pasture and cotton field — just east of Kellogg and Andover Road.
“It really was kind of looking back at everybody’s heritage of the area,” said Bill Gardner of Gardner Design, the company that created the branding for the Heritage.
“We kind of went back to settlers coming to this area . . . and finding this place on the prairie . . . and springing something up from the prairie,” he said. It’s “the whole idea that you’ve got to break ground to do it.”
Adam Anderson, Gardner Design’s senior art director, said they chose a farmer but didn’t want him to feel too rural.
The man is featured in a bold bronze and accompanied by a “high-end, more elegant typeface.”
“It takes on a little bit more of a high-end feel,” Anderson said.
Adding to the contemporary look are geometric shapes that form almost a quilt pattern, Gardner said.
There’s also a sun and a feeling of a contemporary harvest.
Gardner said that oftentimes logos or identities for a development are somewhat innocuous, with flowing water or trees and nice typography, but he said the Heritage’s developers were open to a different creative direction.
“There was a boldness in their willingness to go this direction,” Gardner said.
He said a farmer hoeing in a field doesn’t necessarily represent the kind of community someone might want to move to, but he thinks what they’ve created is bigger than that.
The brand “references our foundation in a kind of heroic way.”
“There is that small-town quality but at the same time it is a very urban community,” Gardner said.
It also conveys a feeling of Americana, he said.
Gardner said it ties together the past and the future, and he believes that will be evident when visitors see a statue of the farmer in person at Heritage Plaza, which is meant to be the new downtown for Andover when completed.
“It’s kind of a very modernized simplification of this farmer,” Anderson said.
Developer Jerry Jones thinks the name and logo capture the essence of the development.
“The Heritage name is reflective of Andover’s agricultural heritage and small-town values,” he said.
Jones called them “pioneering values of vision, hard work and perseverance.”
He said the shovel represents planting today for a bountiful crop in the future.
“The sun represents the dawning of a new day for Andover.”
