Gardens British Columbia Identity

PROJECT DETAILS

Client: Gardens British Columbia
Strategy: Gardens BC / Chris Young
Creative Direction: Chris Young

Art Direction: Chris Young
Design: Chris Young
Production: Chris Young

Gardens British Columbia is a coalition of public gardens working together to promote British Columbia as a tourism destination for garden visits and experiences.

The organization was looking to relaunch with a new name and identity, advertisements, promotional collateral and a website. The organization had been doing business as the ‘British Columbia Garden Tourism Coalition Society’ for a few years but wanted to launch their new brand platform as the more friendly Gardens British Columbia – casually known as Gardens BC.

Gardens BC logo on dark background.

In addition to the new identity, I also designed a brand standards guide, brochures/rack cards and a robust new website that focuses on the diversity and beauty across British Columbia’s gardens with tourists as the primary audience and locals as the secondary audience. You can see more of the Gardens BC website here.

Working with Destination British Columbia, the group completed an internal brand strategy to guide the rebranding process. Gardens BC’s marketing committee members include marketing and communications people from the world-famous The Butchart Gardens, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, and UBC Botanical Garden, so it was great to be working with such a diverse mix of people who really know their market.

I reviewed garden organizations across Canada and around the world to see what existed in this space and worked closely with the marketing committee to discuss directions for the new identity. I presented sketches of different concepts, agreeing to move forward with three of them for further investigation. In the end, a text-only wordmark was selected because the logo has to live in close proximity to robust photography, and the group wanted to ensure the logo’s clarity in all circumstances.

I also designed a responsive website with a province-wide garden directory with single and multi-day trip suggestions. You can see the Gardens BC website here. NOTE: Please see my Portfolio page for the website design because their live website has made some changes beyond my control, so it’s not a great representation of what I originally designed.

Print and digital ads have been created to assist visitors in trip planning, shown in the examples below.