Cultivating a buzzworthy brand identity

DC Natives is a grassroots organization that partners with residents in the nation’s capital to grow native pollinator gardens for free. These spaces build community, support local wildlife, and address climate impact one garden at a time.

The organization needed a brand identity and web presence to establish a clear voice, expand awareness, and give its mission the visual foundation to grow.

We cultivated an illustrative brand identity system rooted in the idea of “neighborhood ecology,” where community and nature are part of the same living system.

The primary mark is a butterfly whose shape echoes the DC monogram. The butterfly’s four wings map to the four quadrants of the city, a simple image that celebrates Washington, DC, and the people and pollinators who call it home.

We extended the brand’s visual language into a suite of illustrations that includes flowers, flourishing stems and leaves, and bees, birds, and butterflies. Each flight path depicts the movement and buzzing activity in a pollinator garden, highlighting the thriving, interconnected world it makes possible.