Visual System for the Brownfields Assessment Project

The National City Brownfields Assessment Project is an initiative by the SDSU Center for Regional Sustainability in collaboration with National City. The client needs include a poster, event flyer, a banner, a revision to the logo’s typography and lock-up, and social media collateral. The Brownfields Assessment Project’s aim is to collaborate with the National City community to locate, assess, and plan for the future use of brownfields within the community. As such, the client’s goals included creating a brand system that would help to reinforce community trust, establish strong ties for collaboration, and to push or community-wide engagement and participation. National City is of majority Latino and Asian population, these communities find themselves to be disproportionately affected by environmental racism. National City is a densely populated urban zone within San Diego county. Due to zoning laws not coming into effect until after settlement and industrialization had taken place, a lot of the housing today finds itself next to heavy industry and abandoned sites that formerly or currently are sites for dumping. Because of this proximity between housing and industry the residents of National City are at higher risk of developing health problems than the rest of the residents in San Diego county. This is especially a problem for the population of elderly and youth in the city as they are at the most risk of health issues and death as result from environmental hazards and pollution. The challenges of this project included balancing the amount of information delivered to the public through the design, moving away from alienating academic language towards a more casual and friendlier tone, making sure to be clear on the intentions and limitations of the Brownfield Assessment Project, and to emphasize the need for community input and mutual collaboration between SDSU and the locals of National City. Other considerations included the use of multi-lingual support in choice typography and in the use of messaging, and creating a graphics system that is accessible for reuse to a non-designer. Each designer created a visual system that invigorates and communicates effectively to the general public of National City the need and importance of the Brownfields Assessment Project. This was explored through photographic images that reflect the community, and graphics that echo the call to action. The logo typography was also explored, designers chose type that would be more aligned with the needs of the client and reflective of the system each designer built. As part of the logo explorations, designers created different lock-ups with the existing logo mark or different takes on the existing mark.