Snowbird Brand Guidelines: A 1971 Utah Resort, a Tram and Ted Nagata’s Winged Logo

An Alta lodge manager, an oilman and a canyon of mining claims.

Snowbird sits in Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah’s Wasatch Range, just down the canyon from Alta and a short drive from Salt Lake City. The idea came from Ted Johnson, who, Snowbird says, arrived at Alta in 1954 to work a winter at a lodge and began to imagine a resort below it; English Wikipedia says he later managed the Alta Lodge for about a decade. Between 1965 and 1967, Snowbird’s timeline says, Johnson and his wife bought up old mining claims in the canyon, largely in secret.

In 1969 Johnson met Dick Bass, a Texas oilman who was already an investor in Vail, and the two became partners, according to Snowbird and English Wikipedia. Snowbird opened in December 1971 with its aerial tram to Hidden Peak, three chairlifts — Gad 1, Gad 2 and Wilbere — the Lodge at Snowbird and the Snowbird Center, the resort’s timeline says. In 1974, English Wikipedia says, Johnson sold his interest to Bass, and the Bass family went on to own the resort outright, The Park Record reported in 2014.

Unusually for Utah, Snowbird operates largely on private land, English Wikipedia says; The Park Record put the privately owned share at about half of the terrain, with the rest under the U.S. Forest Service. The resort spreads across three drainages, Peruvian Gulch, Gad Valley and Mineral Basin, and the tram climbs to Hidden Peak, at roughly 11,000 feet.

Ted Nagata’s wings.

Snowbird’s identity was settled before the resort opened. In 1967, the resort’s timeline says, Johnson hired a designer to create a logo and marketing materials, which he used, together with a short film narrated by Warren Miller, to pitch the project to investors. In a 2024 article on Snowbird’s website, a former communications manager at the resort identifies that designer as Ted Nagata, a Salt Lake City graphic designer with a master’s degree in commercial art from the University of Utah, who had worked for the local firm Bailey & Montague before starting his own business in 1962. The architects drawing the first plans for Snowbird introduced him to Johnson, and Snowbird became his new company’s first client.

The same article quotes Nagata on the mark: the “bird” idea was impossible to overlook, he said, and turning a bird’s wings into a dynamic shape seemed the right direction, with blue for winter and green for summer following from the resort’s year-round plan. Nagata recalled designing much more than the logo, including the ski folder, lift tickets, letterhead, a large skiing poster, lift and trail signs, logos for shops, interior graphics and the original graphics for the tram.

Snowbird says the logo has stayed largely unchanged for more than 50 years and appears on hats, stickers, signs, the tram and even the manhole covers around the resort. It describes the mark as one of the most recognisable in Utah, which is the resort’s own assessment. The tram itself was renewed for the 50th-anniversary season of 2021–22, when Snowbird introduced new cabins; in 2023 it added rooftop balconies on which summer riders can travel outside.

The resort’s buildings carry the same long view. The Cliff Lodge opened its west wing in 1973 and gained hundreds more rooms, the Cliff Spa and a conference centre in a 1986 expansion, Snowbird says; a full renovation was completed in 2019, when a restaurant named SeventyOne, after the founding year, opened. The Summit at Snowbird, a building on Hidden Peak, opened in 2015.

How ski resort operators present themselves.

Ski resort operators sell a place before they sell a product, so much of their public image is built from the mountain itself: lifts, groomed runs and snow-covered peaks, photographed and published by the companies themselves. The corporate site of Alterra Mountain Company goes a step further, printing map coordinates beside its mountain images. Each resort’s own pages carry the practical layer — lift and run status, webcams and a trail map. When Deer Valley added 200 acres and seven runs for its 2026/27 season, Alterra announced them by acreage and by the name of the new lift.

Naming is a large part of the work. Trails, lifts and bowls carry their own names, and new lifts are announced by name: Deer Valley’s Keetley Express and Hail Peak Express are two from its recent expansion. Above the resorts sit pass products. Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass and Alterra’s Ikon Pass, launched in January 2018, group many mountains under one season pass, and Alterra says the Ikon Pass now reaches more than 70 destinations. Pass tiers, partner days and reservation rules become part of the vocabulary skiers learn.

Digital tools extend that system. Resort websites invite visitors to download a mobile app, and some groups have bought the technology behind their sales: Alterra says it acquired Aspenware, a resort e-commerce and technology business, in May 2022. At Alterra, loyalty is framed through pass benefits, such as an extra night for pass holders who stay three nights at Deer Valley and discounted lift tickets for friends and family.

Behind the resort names sits a quieter corporate layer of pages on owners, leadership, values and portfolios. When Alterra was named in 2018, The Denver Post reported that the aim was not to forge a new brand but to build a platform that would elevate the individuality of each resort. Deer Valley’s own website keeps its name up front and links to Alterra Mountain Company in its footer.

From the Bass family to the Cummings.

The mountain has grown in steps. Mineral Basin, on the back of Hidden Peak, opened with its own lift in 1999, and in 2001 the Baldy Express lift connected Snowbird with Alta, allowing skiers to move between the two on a joint Alta-Bird ticket, Snowbird says; English Wikipedia notes the joint pass is for skiers only, as Alta does not allow snowboarding. In 2005 the resort opened the Peruvian Tunnel, a 600-foot tunnel with a conveyor lift linking Peruvian Gulch with Mineral Basin, which Snowbird calls North America’s only ski tunnel. English Wikipedia gives Snowbird about 2,500 acres and a vertical drop of 3,240 feet.

Ownership changed in May 2014. The Park Record reported on 12 May 2014 that the Cumming family, owners of Powdr Corp., had bought a majority interest in Snowbird from the Bass family, covering the base facilities, including the Cliff Lodge and the Snowbird Center, and the privately owned terrain; Powdr Corp. itself was not part of that deal, and terms were not released. The paper reported that Ian Cumming had been one of the original investors in the Inn at Snowbird, and that Bass stayed on as chairman with the management team unchanged. Today both Snowbird’s website and POWDR’s list Snowbird among POWDR’s adventure-lifestyle brands, alongside Copper Mountain and Mt. Bachelor.

For a design guide, Snowbird shows how a mark drawn before opening day can become a resort’s whole visual system, from lift tickets to tram cabins. Compare POWDR, the resort company that now lists Snowbird among its brands, and Deer Valley, another Wasatch resort. For this guide we use a winter blue, a summer green, granite grey and powder white with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Snowbird’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.