I did this rebranding project for MountainTrue as part of my school coursework. The goal was to increase volunteers for MountainTrue by rebranding the organization to target ideological conservatives and bring people together.
At the time, MountainTrue did not have what I felt was an effective logo or branding, which in some ways was freeing. For the logo, I wanted to present MountainTrue appropriately for the rebranding: not just as an environmental conservationist nonprofit, but as an organization dedicated to sustainability and growth in WNC.
In the end, my instructor and I both agreed that the mountains were too literal and that the raccoon (affectionately named Ricky) was not appropriate for the target audience, which I considered to be more serious and focused on economic growth. So the third logo concept, representing financial growth, was chosen and a color scheme was developed for the brand that utilized red and blue to symbolize unity across the political spectrum.
The revised logo concepts were finalized to create the above logo, which represented MountainTrue’s (new) values of unity and growth. This could be summed up in the company’s new tagline: “Nature Isn’t Political”
With a clear direction and a new tagline, I started on the ad concepts. The above concepts were intended to illustrate the theme of unity and highlight that conserving nature isn’t a one-sided issue. They weren’t intended to be indicative of the the final ads but to demonstrate the two potential theme variations.
The ad on the left was adapted from one of the concepts, with refined language, positioning and image processing. The intention was to avoid the aggressive tone of the concept and improve the hierarchy of the text. The ad on the right is based on the same theme, with similar language, but focuses specifically on children, to appeal to traditional conservative family values.
Building on the theme of family values, I created a brochure to persuade conservatives to donate to MountainTrue. The idea is that they’re doing more than donating to a nonprofit: they’re taking out an investment in their children’s future. It uses imagery of outdoor activities typical of middle- and lower-class conservative families, like fishing, camping and baseball.
Finally, I created concepts for letterhead and business cards. The goal was to cleanly display the contact info and branding of the organization. Because the business cards are more personal items, they were created to express the theme of unity that is used throughout the branding materials.
I finalized the concepts based on the usual feedback cycle. I still really like the business card design, which is a great application of the white logo on the brand’s signature gradient, with room on the other side for contact info. The letterhead is no less effective, available in color and grayscale, with plenty of room to print content on without losing the brand presence.
