
FEATURED WORK
Newark Land Bank:
Can a Brand Help Level the
Playing Field?
Scope:
Brand Development
Brand Identity
Image Development
Collateral and Promotional Design
Favorite Detail:
Aside from the symbol which we think cleverly captures the Land Bank mission, our favorite detail is the flexibility build into the visual identity. From the seal, to the symbol, the progarm gives the land bank a lot of versatility in raising the profile ofthe organization
Background:
The Newark Land Bank is the first of its kind in the State of New Jersey. The Land Bank strategically acquires, maintains, and repurposes vacant, abandoned, and foreclosed properties, and efficiently returns them to productive use, providing a remarkable service to the City of Newark.
Challenge:
At the heart of its mission is fostering and nurturing a community
through homeownership. Homeownership is a path to wealth generation. Moreover, a new home in a neighborhood where a blighted property once stood leads to a ripple effect in the community around the home. It’s this idea that is at the heart of the Land Bank’s new brand identity.
Approach:
The idea was to create a symbol that represented not only a path to homeownership but also one home’s impact on the wider community. The continuous spiral of the house illustrates that path as well as representing a beginning to bigger and better things to come for the homeowner and the neighborhood.
That symbol evolved further into a seal, creating a graphical device that is both familiar and functional. Familiar in that the logo suggests a contemporary approach to a nostalgic form of branding. Functional in that it provides a mechanism for containing the organizational name, the state, the parent organization, and a qualifying descriptor. Also, the complete seal can be taken be disassembled for a variety of uses without diminishing its visual recognition.





