RED AND BLACK TO MARK GROUP'S BATTLE AGAINST CRYSTAL METH

A young man, his past encircled by Crystal Meth, put his understanding of
the drug to good use, making a logo for the new Crystal Meth Task Force,
whose goal is to eradicate the drug from the community.

The Crystal Meth Task Force, a sub committee of the Healthy Communities
Committee, sponsored the competition that challenged local youth to design
a logo that will identify their work, their goals and the horror of
addiction. The winner received $200.

"I entered to win the money ?" 200 bucks! I thought yeah, why not try,"
says Aaron Webb, the winner of the logo competition.

Webb may have limited knowledge on where the award money came from but he
does understand the drug. "In my design I have repetition, 'Stop Meth' over
and over. When you're using it, it just keeps going and going and going,
over and over, and I wanted to convey that."

The logo design is simple yet poignant, it conveys a message that is stark
and powerful and ultimately was the look Aaron was aiming for.

"When I first heard about the competition this design idea popped into my
head more as a joke than anything else and I figured that I would design
something else. I kept thinking about it for a week and then I thought
'yeah, I should go with my first idea'," says Webb.

The logo, once designed, took him 45 minutes to draw in black and red.
"Black and red you know, straight up. Those are my colours, you can't
mistake their message," says Webb.

The colours tell the message "we wanted to convey and it was the most
useful image that could be used as a logo. We received some really good
entries but many of them were too detailed for a logo," says Maclynne
Bourquin, the executive director for the Hope Community Services and member
of the Crystal Meth Task Force.

Judging the potential logo designs were six judges, none of which knew who
had submitted what entry.

"I'm proud of it. I think it tells the message and I didn't want to stray
too far from the original idea of 'stop meth.' But, after I handed it in I
thought, 'Oh' I should have used a bio hazard sign, that would have been
way better," laughs Webb.