Project Alpaca

Posted on January 4, 2025January 17, 2025 by Tomato Laboratories

Project Alpaca

Branding, Logo

Project Alpaca is a New York City based non-profit that provides students with developmental workshops and dedicated mentors who guide them through their first milestones in establishing their career. A new logo and identity system was developed based on existing brand tone and identifiable needs.

The Logo

Project Alpaca had an existing logo that was handrawn and full of character but lacked a bit of the formality and structure the organization found itself graduating into as it matured past its initial founding years.

A new logo and base identity system was needed that presented a more professional outward appearance while maintaining the organizations original playfulness and brand tone.

The Alpaca

A new logo and base identity system was needed that presented a more professional outward appearance while maintaining the organizations original playfulness and brand tone.

Custom alpacas were created to represent the diversity of the organization. Project Alpaca mentors are referred to as “Alpacas” and mentees as “Alpacees”, respectively.

While the outfits and hairstyles are interchangeable, the eyeglasses remain constant throughout the system to tie the brand together and reinforce the educational mission of the organization.

Old Meets New:
Thematic Color System

The original brand colors were (mostly) kept on, dusted off, refined, renamed thematically, and reimagined into a complimentary system based on color theory with additional scales, highlights, and lowlights.

A Flexible Identity

A brief but deliberate brand guide was established to outline the new colors, typography, logos, alpacas, illustrations, and how everything should/could play together.

In the Wild

Example applications were spun up to provide real world context and to inspire the brand caretakers to take over and have fun with it.

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FishEye Collaborative

Posted on January 3, 2025May 28, 2025 by Tomato Laboratories

FishEye Collaborative

Branding, Logo, Web

FishEye Collaborative is an emerging conservation technology non-profit specializing in marine conservation bioacoustics. They do research and development on non-invasive listening technologies that can help evaluate and protect ocean habitats. Their collaborators include the Cornell University Center for Conservation Bioacoustics, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the FORTH Institute, and the Curaçao Sea Aquarium and Substation. An inaugural website and brand identity was developed to support their first scientific publication and to introduce them to the public.

The Bedrock

While the main purpose of the collaboration was to design a beautiful new website, we used the opportunity to build a robust brand foundation on solid bedrock to support future organizational needs. Building off an existing logo, we worked backward to create a new, simplistic mark.

This helped strengthen brand conceptually and filled in gaps across mediums. Next, an appropriate and informed typographic set, color palette, pattern library, and additional ID elements were created.

The Colors Aquatic

Drawing inspiration from the shallow tropical waters of the Caribbean and the undersea environment where the organization primarily operates, an appropriate, utilitarian, and aesthetically pleasing color palette was developed.

A Harmonious Identity

A brand guide was developed to expand on the core, guiding elements to ensure all mediums and applications are thoughtfully constructed and designed.

Pockota Medium (for headlines) and Public Sans (for everything else) paired well together typographically. Together these fonts presented an appropriate balance of science-text-book seriousness, modernity, playfulness, and readability.

High resolution abstracted coral reef patterns were collected and treated with brand gradients to supplement visuals as background textures.

Additionally, an existing library of beautiful photographs was folded into the visual language.

For the species library, a celebrated and renowned illustrator of oceanic field guides was brought onboard for a licensing partnership (stand-in illustrations are used on this case study but the actual licensed ones are present on the live project/brand).

A data visualization system was developed alongside an undersea scene-building toolkit for scientific diagrams, charts, and figures.

Digital Applications

A modern website, including a fully searchable and browsable fish sound library microsite, was designed and developed. Additionally, a social suite was created to help showcase the work of the organization and make the scientific findings approachable and fun.

Physical Applications

To inspire the crew to ideate into the future, a suite of physical applications was envisioned.

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Healthy Climate Communities

Posted on January 2, 2025January 30, 2025 by Tomato Laboratories

Healthy Climate Communities

Branding, Logo

Healthy Climate Communities is a Hawaii-based non-profit that leverages education and community action to fight climate change on the island of O’ahu. One way they do this is by engaging with schools, community groups, and volunteers to plant native loulu palm saplings to grow a restorative forest on the watershed of Hāmākua Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary. A new mission-sensitive logo and identity system were developed to help mature the organization’s brand and community presence.

The Logo

The logo brief only had a couple of hard requirements: it should reference the beloved, endangered local Loulu Palm—which is at the core of the organization’s mission, as it regularly involves the community in planting a native forest of them.

Pritchardia kaalae (Loulu palm) via Wikipedia

And it should reference the people involved in the work. An optional bonus would be somehow including the much loved, endangered, and very recognizable Hawaiian Stilt bird.

The result was an expressive and symbolic logomark that tells the unique story of an organization using community involvement to help restore a native forest on a marsh, one Loulu Palm at a time. The mark was paired with Goji Display, a friendly but demanding, rounded sans-serif font.

Hāmākua-Informed Colorways

The color palette was directly inspired by Hāmākua Marsh and the organization’s nature-focused mission. It was also kept light, optimistic, and fun to reflect the feeling volunteers and students experience when out in the marsh planting palm saplings or pulling out invasive weeds to help the habitat thrive.

A Restorative Identity

A full brand guide was created to outline the new logo family, color system, and fonts. Further guidance was given on ways the Loulu palm silhouette could be used to crop photos, create patterns, and extend the brand through depth and continuity.

A Cohesive Social Media Vision

To inspire a forward looking social media strategy, we imagined how the new brand could inform an already robust and rich suite of content. Weaving beautiful photography, timely event announcements, calls to action, and educational awareness into a unified public-facing vision, we empowered the organization’s caretakers to grow their brand’s social media presence into the future.

Room to Grow

Further brand explorations were charted through physical buildouts and imaginings meant to inspire, challenge, and engage the organization’s custodians, gardeners, and community of foresters.