Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Green Thumbs Will Save Us All
- Brand Strategy
- Brand Identity
- Brand Activation
- Branded Environment
- Website
- Arts & Culture
- Social Impact
Plant with Purpose
With an almost 100-year legacy of native plant conservation — from backyards to the backcountry of California — Santa Barbara Botanic Garden was still widely perceived as just a pretty place to visit. To achieve their mission of inspiring the public to harness native plants as a solution to climate change, it was critical to rethink their brand and reimagine their messaging from the ground up. By transcending the concept of their physical space or location, and unifying their distinct departments under one primary purpose, we shifted the entire organization’s way of seeing itself internally and how they communicated externally.
Are you ready to grow?
To achieve the Garden’s primary goal of awareness and behavior change, we positioned them as not only an advocate for native plants, but as a global model for environmental conservation. By transcending their location and unifying under one primary purpose — harnessing the power of native plants as a solution to climate change — we shifted the entire organization’s mindset internally and how they communicated it externally.
Take It All In
The logo mark expresses the synergy of plants and people in both the literal and abstract. It’s meant to come with plenty of room for interpretation — from rings of a tree to DNA coding, a sunburst, or the center of an eye. People are invited to bring their unique perspective to the brand in the same way they might experience nature. Squint a bit, you might just see something else.
In and Around The Garden
The fresh new brand can be found throughout the grounds, whether on a t-shirt in the gift shop or the Garden Guide that gets you from the Meadow to the Manzanita, this floral and flexible system works across it all.
A Growing Site Experience
The Garden’s website quickly became one of the most powerful tools they had to share their mission with the world. Through a highly collaborative process, we completely restructured and redesigned their platform from the ground up. The new site encompasses the culmination of all the work the Garden does – for science, our planet and the visitors. Quite literally using the concept of cross-pollination, the site moves visitors through mission, education, events and wayfinding seamlessly, as you experience the Garden in person or from across the globe.
“We didn’t get lost in their client mix, which was really refreshing. J2 was personable, easy to work with, and passionate. Their work breathed new life into the Garden.”
Jamie Eschette, Director of Marketing, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Planting Seeds
We built a brand that could be embraced and set into action by a small marketing department across all the Garden’s communications. We helped make that happen through detailed voice and visual guidelines along with a suite of templates ready for spreading their good word.
