Case Study
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Green Thumb
Logo, Branding, Illustration, Page Layout, Website Design
Green Thumb is a passion project addressing food insecurity among young families and post-secondary students located on Vancouver Island. Sustainability, healthy eating, and budget-friendly opportunities are what Green Thumb advocates. The project aims to give individuals the opportunity to make healthier decisions through gardening.
“Green Thumb was born to fulfil the need for well-designed and clearly explained gardening information.”
Research
I discovered that nearly 40% of Canadian post-secondary students are food insecure. As a student, I know first-hand that eating healthy is extremely difficult. What's more challenging is that good food is expensive. This fact coupled with my knowledge of gardening got me questioning why more people don’t grow their own food. This question lead to learning many individuals do not know how to garden. In search of an answer to this problem in gardening, I learned quickly that user-friendly resources don't exist. Green Thumb was born to fulfil the need for well-designed and clearly explained gardening information. The idea should include easy-to-understand techniques and activities with practical gardening tips to improve access to inexpensive, good, natural food.
The table of contents from the gardening guide First Steps showcasing the type of information included. Important topics such as planting schedules, and indexes about individual plants help the user quickly find the information they are searching for.
Process
I started by designing the Green Thumb identity.
The first iterations of the logo consisted of different gardening tools and plants. The idea for the plant icon in the logo came from the reoccurring theme of growth and change as the project developed. Eventually I landed on a simple variation of seedling just sprouting to enhance the idea of new beginnings.
“The final identity is friendly and welcoming and dissolves any misconceptions or fear of trying something new”
Design Choices
The colour palette consists of earthy colours to enhance the theme of the project and give it a homegrown feel. The colours and illustrations work together to make the brand feel friendly and approachable. The design is both a valuable learning resource and is user-friendly.
The typography chosen for the project needed to reflect what the brand represented The chosen sans serif is both professional and reliable, while still feeling friendly and inviting. Farm New is used for headings, while Macho light is used for body text. The two typefaces allow for both contrast and balance throughout the brand due to the different weights. The use of capitalized headings was chosen to balance out the tenderness of the illustration style.
I chose a soft colour palette and combined that with delicate illustrations and a warm tone to help make the brand approachable
First version of the Green Thumb Logo.
Final logo for Green Thumb
The final identity is friendly and welcoming and dissolves any misconceptions or fear of trying something new. The typeface, Farm New, helps convey a friendly tone while the graphic and rough hand-drawn feel convey a sense of natural softness.
“The guides break down the information into reasonably sized chunks”
The final cover design for Food Freedom: A Beginner’s Guide to Gardening on a Budget on Vancouver Island. The guides have been designed to work together as a set, but also on their own, making them very versatile to each beginners interests and skills .
Solution
Using the Green Thumb brand I created, I then proceeded to creating a set of resources designed specifically for beginners. The main goal of this project is to provide the resources necessary for individuals to make healthier decisions.
Beginner's Guides to Gardening (3 books)
The guides break down the information into reasonably sized chunks, making the information less intimidating. Each book focuses on a different part of gardening designed in a simple and clear hierarchy. Different categories for each book allow a focus on important topics. This approach helps beginners quickly find information relevant to their gardening problems.
Starter Kit
The starter kit is designed for those who don't know where or how to start gardening. The kit provides all the necessary items for the beginner gardener. All contents are cohesively branded making it a helpful addition to the learning package.
“The kit provides all the necessary items for the beginner gardener”
