CHS artist wins top prize in IT Department logo design competition

Matthew Cortes is awarded a brand new laptop computer for the new logo design

Lynette White

Senior Matthew Cortes (middle) poses with the IT department to celebrate his winning entry in their logo creation contest.

Matthew Cortes’ first place design is now to new logo for CJUSD’s Information Technology department. (Courtesy Jamal Boyce | CJUSD IT Dept,)

Colton, CA—Matthew Cortes needed a laptop.

Thankfully, the CJUSD Information Technology department had just offered a logo creation competition in which the winning prize was a Lenovo ThinkPad. So, Matthew put his talents to work and designed the first place logo.

On January 24, the IT Department celebrated Matthew in a logo unveiling at the CHS library and awarded him the coveted prize.

“I was caught off guard when they told me that I won, because they didn’t tell me that I won until they showed me the new logo,” Matthew said.

The competition for designing the department logo was launched on October 12, 2022. All students from K-12 were invited to enter the competition. Colton High assistant principal Diyaira Durham shared that around 40 students from across the school district entered the contest. 

“We have many talented students in Colton Joint, so why pay someone to do a logo when you can see new talents in CJUSD,” Durham said.

Ms. Jannet Valdez teaches logo design to her students at Slover Mountain High. (Courtesy Jamal Boyce | CJUSD IT Dept.)

One of the IT departments in our district that handles our internet, tech devices, etc, wanted to rebrand themself as a department and the way to rebrand is to create a logo and they wanted to see students from CJUSD to create it. IT Director Jamal Boyce shared that his staff selected Matthew’s logo because “it was simple and clean. I felt the icons within the logo represented our department and how we connect innovative thoughts and support technology within the district.”

Matthew learned about the art of logo design from Ms. Jannet Valdez while he was enrolled at Slover Mountain High School. Her instruction to keep things simple and easy-to-read definitely paid off.

Now Matthew gets to enjoy the spoils of his efforts. He is already putting the ThinkPad to good use pursuing his passion for writing.