Our final group project in our Collaborative Processes course, we were assigned clients to assist. Our client was Cindy Gilbert. Cindy Gilbert is the founding director of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design sustainable design program. She also has her own private sustainable ideas company. Cindy asked us to help her brand her company, Alula. She asked us to create branding guidelines, a logo, business cards and a website.

Alula is a finger-like bone in a bird’s wing. It essentially is its thumb. To merge ideas of an alula and sustainability, we created a logo that look both like a feather and a leaf. The bottom portion is a leaf curling up into an indigo feather. This logo can be paired with the typeface or on its own.

We chose Filson soft as our typeface because it is a soft round organic shaped typeface. The hookless “a” also helps play up the palindrome look while still remaining legible and not look too forced.

For color, we wanted bright and energetic colors like our client’s personality. We also wanted a simple clean feel. We chose three colors, white, indigo and teal. The teal we chose is vivid and saturated. We wanted a green to help paint the story of sustainability but without the earthy green. To help balance the unnatural we chose a very natural but vibrant blue, indigo. With the “unnatural” green and vibrant natural blue together you still gain the bio mimicry effect without falling into the “green” cliche seen in this style of design.