First Floor Group
First Floor Group is a team of artists, creators, and changemakers committed to education, equity, and fellowship. With a special focus on removing barriers to education or career options for marginalized communities – particularly through workforce development, career technical education (CTE), and general education practices – they facilitate events that bring people together, design programs that improve outcomes, and create assets that amplify the voices of our communities.
Deliverables:
Mood Board Collaboration
Custom Logo Design
Alternative Logo Design
Submark Design
Color Palette Development
Font Pairings
Custom Line Art Illustrations
Branding Style Guide
Letterhead
Web Design
I was approached by Roy and Lindsay to help them refresh their branding and rebuild their website. They realized that their old, monochromatic and overly-masculine branding was not connecting with their target audience (education administrators, business owners, community leaders, and CBO partners). It was also time for them to take their website to the next level so that they were able to clearly and concisely articulate the broad variety of services they offered.
Their new brand had to feel innovative, creative, whimsical, professional, optimistic, nimble, approachable, and ego-free. It was important to Roy and Lindsay that their visual branding conveyed how FFG could help people meet their goals. Even their name ties back to that mission, and so they wanted people to quickly sense that this is the first place to go when you want to get something done – a starting place for creativity and support. With the tagline of “change from the ground up,” they help you build a solid foundation that empowers you to continue with your work.
So I decided to take it back to those core foundational elements by bringing in the foundational building blocks of design – geometric shapes and lines that when creatively combined in a new way take on a life of their own and blossom into something totally unique. From this concept, their geometric favicon, logo, submark, as well as this custom line art style was born. FFG is all about coming in at the brainstorming/ideation phase, so I wanted to juxtapose the clean, crisp geometric shapes with more of a sketched/hand-drawn feel to capture some of that imagination and whimsy that the dreamers and changemakers coming to them inevitably will also share.
From there, we needed to symbolically (and simplistically) represent each of the three categories of services they offered. And I couldn’t believe how “meant-to-be” the geometric symbolic pairings became as “Gather” came to be associated with circles, “Build” with squares, and “Broadcast” with triangles. I had more fun than I could have ever imagined designing the initial line art compositions for each of the main categories. It was such an exciting, collaborative process full of productive brainstorming and mapping sessions to really figure out how to categorize and represent some of the primary services they offered within these minimalistic, abstract line art icons creatively woven together.
To complete their innovative and bold look, I selected a geometric sans-serif font called Visby CF for their logo and header text that, when paired with the somewhat softer look of Quicksand for their body font, felt welcoming and fresh. For the color palette, I wanted to primarily rely on a lot of open white space for breathability and a cooler black tone for clarity. But I went bold with their primary purple accent color that shows they’re not afraid to help their clients stand out and find their own voice. The complimentary mint green shade as a secondary accent color adds an even more innovative edge to their branding that when combined with all the other colors offers up a visual aesthetic unmatched by anyone in their industry.
We then got to move on to their website redesign! Roy really wanted to highlight the new illustration style and he loved the idea of building a massive composition containing all the elements we’d built throughout the branding process. So I created a new illustration to highlight front and center on the home page with a combination of the square, triangle, and circle shapes to demonstrate how the wide variety of work FFG is involved in ties together. This unique layout simultaneously piques the site visitor’s interest and draws them down the page. Right away you are introduced to who FFG is, who they help, what they do, and how they do it. And then the three service categories become very clear to help direct visitors to the right area.
The new site also includes a comprehensive portfolio of past projects, an about page, contact page, and an in-depth strategies page. I had a blast designing all of the custom illustrations, icons, and banner images you can find scattered across the site. Take a look here!
It’s been such a joy to work with Roy and Lindsay, and I am so excited to continue collaborating with FFG to help put their new branding into action! Explore their website to learn more about their services and see if they might be able to help your business out.
Client Love!
"Nicole was great! She was a pleasure to work with and extremely professional; on time and communicated clearly and efficiently. She made the process painless and fun. She took care to smoothly lead us through the processes and steps. Nicole met all deadlines and delivered great work, surpassing our expectations and adding great perspective, ideas, and value to the project. Highly recommended!!"
— Roy Robles, First Floor Group
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