My first major project of my new role at Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation was to rebrand their television program, This Week in Louisiana Agriculture, or TWILA for short. When I applied for the Louisiana Farm Bureau graphic design job, I thought I was working for an insurance company. Little did I know, I was being hired for the non-profit that advocates for Louisiana agriculture. Not only did I have to learn the brand of the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation, but learn as much as I possibly could about a television show I knew nothing about. 

I worked on the show graphics every week, but also researched old stories and topics talked about on the show. The clients for this project were my boss, Public Relations director Mike Danna, and the TWILA executive producer Avery Davidson.

Working with Mike & Avery, we came to some mutual agreements about the color and type of logo. As shown above "This Week" was the emphasis over "Louisiana Agriculture" and we wanted to change that. Avery suggested just using 'TWILA', instead of the full name, and while Mike and I thought it was a great idea, it was not the final solution. Also, the colors were very muted and dull, so I wanted to brighten up the color palette. I did want to keep the logo some kind of green, because the show is revolved around agriculture. The original logo had a leaf coming out of the middle, and we wanted to keep that leaf. 

When designing the logo, I was thinking of the most prominent place you'd see the logo -- on television. I was thinking how the logo would look in the bottom right corner as the bug and thinking how it would look on a title screen. I also had to think about how it would look on promotional items, like a t-shirt or a coffee cup. 

So I created a primary and secondary logo. The primary logo featured the TWILA name with the leaf growing out of the 'I', with 'This Week In' turned on it's side and "Louisiana Agriculture" stacked on each other. They wanted to grow the reach of the audience further than the demographic already watching the show, and I thought it was still important to keep the full name as a part of the logo. The secondary features the TWILA mark with no text below it. 

Avery's suggestion of simplifying the logo really paid off and decided to run with it. I really liked the leaf growing out of the 'I', and thought the mark stood well on it's own with or without text. 

The original green was close to a forest green, and I really wanted to brighten up the colors across the board. I eventually landed on PMS 355, and it has been a dream to work with. It's vibrant without being in your face, and it's flexible around other bright colors used in the TWILA palette down the road.

When designing the business cards, I thought of the roles each of us play for the back cover. The host, Mike Danna, had a suit, the producers had the vintage television, inspired by the show starting in 1981. Each reporter got the microphone and as graphic designer and webmaster, I got the computer with the layout of the new website. I incorporated the TWILA green within each icon, and used grey, white and black to emphasis the shape and bring out the green.

These icons were used on the business cards, website and media kit.

We order polos with the TWILA logo on the right sleeve for our field reporters. So they can melt in the sun while showing the brand.

We order a variety of TWILA merch after the rebranding that included coffee mugs, water bottles, tote bags and these two guys. These cow and chicken stress relievers are still a popular item to giveaway. The logo was printed on the cow's back and the chicken had the logo on its belly.

I animated all TWILA graphics, with the exception of the open and close the the show. I wanted all of the segment graphics to have the TWILA green in some way, and highlight the color.

The TWILA brand as grown since this rebranding project, and I've made design updates since to the brand assets. That includes the website, where we feature video heads and highlight all of our video stories, segments, blog entries and podcasts. 

The latest version of the TWILA website is designed within Squarespace, using the Harris template. 

I've had the chance to update the TWILA graphics over the past eight years, adding more color, and not using white background for fullscreen graphics. While not every segment has TWILA green like in the previous package, these colors complement our TWILA green very well.