Client: Valley Nurseries, Marlborough
Brief: To create a simple, natural and memorable logo for Valley Nurseries, a subscription-based vegetable seedling company in Marlborough.
Valley Nurseries’ point of difference is that they take the guess work out of planting a vege garden; allowing time-poor, busy people the chance to have a successful garden, without needing to research what to plant and when.
The logo needed to communicate that this will make your gardening life easy and better. It also needed to connect with a predominantly female audience, people who have an interest in the outdoors & gardening and who desire to grow their own food and know where it comes from.
The company brand values are crafted, inspiring, natural, rugged and simple. When discussing imagery for the logo, Sally and Hamish wanted us to reference the outline of the Richmond Ranges which they look onto from their property.
The Valley Nurseries logo uses a stylized, simplified icon that represents the valley below the Richmond Ranges, and a seedling sprouting between them to represent the Nursery. The shape of the brand icon echoes the shape of a greenhouse – representing the locally propagated seedlings.
The font is a rounded, sans serif, written all in lower caps. It communicates simplicity and accessibility. There is nothing intimidating about this logo; everything about it communicates ease and friendliness.
The client originally envisaged the branding in black and white only. But when talking with them, the idea of adding green came up. We decided that a bold and fresh colour-way would work, and chose a beautiful green that would be used as a solid colour, with the logo in white. This would be the primary brand usage. Sally chose a paint colour called Wainuiomata from Dulux as the inspiration, which was gorgeous and we used without changing. Complimentary colours of a deep aubergine purple, a forest green, a beige were also added. The purple can also be used as a primary brand colour. Having the additional colours will assist with the creation of marketing materials, the website and other branding elements.
For marketing materials, photographs with a green or purple overlay can also be used under the logo.