More Than a Logo: Remembering Spike's Creative Legacy
- Eunice Ko
- 23 hours ago
- 3 min read
If you’ve participated in one of our 5Ks, you’ve already encountered Spike's work. It has been printed on T-shirts, stretched across banners, and displayed on signs throughout the course. Year after year, his designs helped give the 5K For Today its identity.
Earlier this year, we lost Jack "Spike" Spiker, our friend, longtime community member, and the artist who helped shape the 5K’s visual identity.
Spike was a professional graphic designer long before he began designing for The Here and Now Project. Throughout his career, he worked in advertising and healthcare and airbrushed everything from vans to commissioned artwork. He also met his wife, Dawn, while they were both working at a newspaper.
After his stroke, creating art became more difficult. At one point, frustrated by how his physical limitations affected his airbrush work, Spike considered giving it up. Dawn encouraged him to keep experimenting and find a way to create that worked for him.
One day, she came home to find him smiling proudly at what he had made.
“Look what I did,” he said.
That persistence stayed with Spike as he adapted to life after his stroke and found new ways to continue doing what he loved.
After Spike and Dawn moved to Washington to be closer to their grandchildren, they found their way to The Here and Now Project. They joined us for picnics, adaptive bowling nights, and other community gatherings. As Spike became part of the community, he saw how his artistry could support something he cared about and began sharing it generously.
Spike brought not only his creativity to this work, but also a deep care for the people and purpose behind it.
“His heart went into whatever he was putting together,” Dawn shared.
Each 5K logo began with research, ideas, and sketches. For Spike, a successful design did more than catch the eye. It captured the spirit of an event rooted in movement, possibility, and a community determined to do life together.
The logos he created became more than artwork for an annual event. They became visual reminders that life can still be rich with purpose, connection, and joy, even after everything changes. Each year, the logo invites participants to celebrate possibility, encourage one another, and keep moving forward together.
That spirit is at the heart of our community. The Here and Now Project has been shaped by people who share what they have and show up for one another. Spike’s contribution was especially visible, but behind every logo was something deeper: years of helping this community become what it is today.
Dawn remembers him as charismatic, bold, and easy to talk to. He was the kind of person who was always looking for a way to lift someone else up.
This August, hundreds of people will run, walk, and roll while wearing Spike’s artwork. Many may not know the name of the person who created it, but each will be taking part in an event he helped shape.
Thank you, Spike, for sharing your creativity, faith, kindness, and heart with The Here and Now Project. Your designs will continue to inspire us,
but even more importantly, so will the life you lived.
Join Us for the 7th Annual 5K For Today
With the 5K just under two weeks away, there’s still time to be part of it.
Join us in Puyallup on August 9, or participate virtually from wherever you are between August 9–16. However you take part, you’ll be helping sustain the peer mentorship, outreach, resources, and gatherings that connect people living with spinal cord injuries and mobility disabilities.
This year’s 5K carries a little more meaning as we remember the person whose creativity helped shape it for so many years. We hope you’ll join us: for Spike, for the community he loved, and for everyone who will find connection here in the years ahead.
Not participating in the 5K? Volunteers are also an essential part of bringing race day to life.
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