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WildCraft Art Direction: Brand design for a craft and nature focused school for adult learners.
Role: Design Lead responsible for:
1—Art Direction
2—Brand Strategy
3—Brand and Marketing Design
Team: Creative Director, Marketing Lead, Director of Public Programs
Context: WildCraft Studio School is a school striving “to awaken creativity and deepen an understanding of place, through hands-on experiences in making and learning.”
When I joined the team, WildCraft had a loyal core audience and a rich visual history, but the brand lacked consistency and did not have an effective approach to digital marketing.
I delved into WildCraft’s archives of screen printed posters from the first workshops they launched. Founder Chelsea Heffner had developed a rich visual language that had been lost in the transition to digital marketing.
Based on that history I built a library of screen print inspired illustrations, a color palette that can be combined in different ways to respond to seasonal class launches, and a set of fonts that reference idiosyncratic Victorian typography.
Collaborated with marketing lead and photographer to build a library of photographs focused on the act of making and the beauty of nature.
In order to maximize flexibility while grounding the brand in their history, I developed a system for choosing color palettes from a color library based in the original screen printed posters.
The palette can be combined in various ways to create seasonal color directions.
Typographic guidelines elevated the handmade imagery. I chose two fonts whose style and slight irregularities reference an earlier era of printmaking with lead type, a connection to WildCraft’s commitment to the handmade.
WildCraft uses the brand guidelines to produce hundreds of newsletters a year. Creating a library of Figma components and design patterns drastically increased efficiency in the production of newsletters.
Results: Since the brand update, a focus on digital marketing using the updated brand identity has led to a 26% increase in revenue for WildCraft.
Lessons:
Don’t walk away from a rich history. By refining WildCraft’s existing visual language, I was able to create a cohesive, scalable, and user-friendly design language—one that evolves without alienating our audience.
Flexibility matters. A structured system doesn’t have to be rigid. By allowing the team to customize color palettes, the brand remains consistent without feeling restrictive.
Efficiency drives impact. With a more defined system, we can now execute new designs faster and with greater consistency, reducing decision fatigue and production time.
Next Steps:
Website Redesign—As part of WildCraft’s evolving digital strategy, I led a website redesign to improve usability and brand consistency. [Take a look at that project here.]
Brand Maintenance—With the updated brand system in place, ongoing efforts focus on ensuring consistency across all touchpoints while allowing room for growth and adaptation.