Start in Your Yard is a local Elgin initiative that encourages homeowners to swap their turfgrass for native plants. Eco-design tends to default to either crunchy or corporate. I wanted to find a third option, something that looks at home on a glossy nonprofit brochure but still feels rooted in actual neighborhoods. The logo uses organic shapes and a tree silhouette without leaning on the usual leaf-and-circle clichés.
Target Audience
The campaign is built for people in the Elgin area who don't think of themselves as environmentalists. Homeowners. Neighbors. Small business owners. The kind of people who'd plant a native sapling on a Saturday afternoon if someone made it easy. The visual identity had to meet them where they are, not preach at them.
Touchpoints
The main pieces were the logo, a brochure that did double duty as education and call to action, and assets the org could use online and in outreach emails. Keeping the brochure visually consistent with the logo was the easy part. Writing it so it didn't read like a textbook took longer.
Success Metrics
This was a community project, so success was less about metrics and more about whether volunteers felt comfortable handing the materials out. They did. Early feedback from the org was that the materials helped people take the campaign seriously, which is exactly what the brand needed to do.
