Effra Green Streets is a wonderful voluntary community greening initiative based where I live in Brixton – bringing plants, trees and biodiversity back to the urban environment, turning local streets from grey to green.

The group needed a new identity which communicated that they were about more than just plants and gardening, but were also about revitalising the wider streetscape and public realm. It needed to sit well with the identity of Lambeth Living Streets, which is their parent organisation, part of the larger Living Streets national charity.

I designed a logo which features an iconic leaf / tree shape, in which the leaf veins / branches also represent a local street grid, using colours adapted from the Living Streets identity, and a warm sans-serif typeface for the name. I created various colour versions and formats of the logo, making sure that it worked perfectly in different contexts and at different sizes.

The lovely Claire Collins at Effra Digital then took the identity and designed a beautifully clean, simple, contemporary and low-carbon website to go with it.

I designed various bits of printed / digital collateral for the group, including information sheets and maps, and we’re looking at creating branded planters too.

As a little extra, I also created a set of contact cards, to be given to people on the street when they came across any of the volunteers getting busy with a flowerbed or planter. These were printed by the folks at SeedPrint onto seed paper – paper embedded with native British wildflower seeds. You plant the cards in a pot of soil, give the soil some water and light, and the seeds germinate within a few weeks. Paper like this can feel a bit gimmicky, but in this case it made perfect sense. The cards feel pleasingly organic, and are a tangible way of sharing the joy of growing some flowers!