Friends of
Alemany Farm
Branding Design • 2021
Designed with TBD* CCA and Vanshika Patel
"If you can feed yourself, you can free yourself." - Mary Reynolds
Friends of Alemany Farm (FOAF) is the largest urban farm in San Francisco and has long been an amazing food resource in the Bay Area. Founded in 2005, the urban farm harvests roughly 10,000 pounds of fresh produce annually that is given away to local residents, volunteers, etc. FOAF's main goals are to empower local residents in sowing their own food security and sovereignty, increase ecological knowledge, and sow the seeds for economic and environmental justice.
FOAF asked us to create a new branding system that honors its past and mission, and also recognizes its evolving values and commitment to moving the needle of environmental and social justice further forward.
We created an identity that recognizes the connection Alemany Farm volunteers cultivate with the land and with each other, celebrates the amazing, diverse community the organization has built and highlights all of the different farm programs. This identity symbolizes that while the organic matter and location of farm work might change, FOAF’s commitment to activism and bettering its community does not.
Brand Identity
The Friends of Alemany Farm (FOAF) brand identity visually incorporates the many aspects of the farmland and the organization. The main logo mark displays a garden-gloved hand, which represents both the stewardship FOAF employees and volunteers bring to their work, as well as this urban farm’s long history of activism in the Bay Area. The organic matter held in the hand changes based on the farm program (grapes for the vineyard, medicinal native plants for the Medicine Garden, etc.) but the hand itself remains constant. This logo system symbolizes FOAF’s consistent commitment to activism and strong relationship with the land.
The identity's colors are derived from a variety of organic elements found on the farm such as California poppies, healthy soil, compost, willow tree leaves, and more. The imagery styles are designed to highlight the volunteers and celebrate the natural beauty of the farm.
Applications
There are a variety of brand identity applications specific to Friends of Alemany Farm’s daily needs. The logo system is useful for employee shirts, displaying a different program logo and respective color for each shirt, as well as pins for volunteers. These pins can serve as tokens for their labor, or as a type of navigation around the farm. Farm employees can also have their seed packet business cards stamped with their respective program logo, and each program on the farmland receives its own collection of plant label stakes.
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