THE FARM IS THE FOUNDATION FOR GROWTH
The Community Farm Alliance is composed of a diverse range of Kentuckians. They are united by their belief in the right to agency in the public policies that shape our economy – our culture – and their abiding conviction in the farm as a foundation for growth. They function through community organizing, leadership development, and strategic alliances across organizations. This non-profit branding project echoes the complexity of the organization and the issues it faces.
We created a comprehensive identity that takes the quilt as its inspiration and its framework. Pulling together disparate visual cues drawn from the farm, the city, the life of the organization – this is a patchwork. And it changes across its extensions, per audience, and over time. It grows.
WHERE DID YOU DRAW YOUR INSPIRATION
FROM FOR THIS MARK AND ITS EXTENSIONS?
I’ve always been drawn to heirlooms. Items you cherish enough to pass on to the next generation. We have very few things in our lives that fit that definition.
The idea of a quilt was powerful. A collection of different pieces, old stories, past knowledge – all brought together to make something beautiful yet functional. We were really drawn to those patterns and geometric shapes. Then common shapes started appearing everywhere. The vertical rows of crops, circular hay bales, barn squares.
WHAT HOOKED YOU ABOUT THE
COMMUNITY FARM ALLIANCE?
Their view of the world. The world they wanted to create. It aligned well with the world I want to live in. More cooperation, more of a balance between city folks and farmers. I can always get behind people who care too much.
“It’s easy to use clichés, but really difficult to represent something that means many different things to many different people. We wanted to create something real, to add value to the conversation about food and where it comes from and why you should care and what it means to us.”
