Garden Organic
Reinvigorating the original organic disruptors
Strategy, Branding, Illustration, Copywriting
Garden Organic have been challenging conventional growing practice and championing Biodiversity since 1958. Liquid Studio helped them recapture their progressive DNA and express their rich legacy of knowledge and community.
Garden Organic is a not-for-profit gardening community and knowledge hub that spearheads the UK organic movement.
In recent years, the organisation and its 20,000 members had lost a clear sense of who they were. Amidst a renewed surge of public interest in sustainable growing – driven by Covid and climate anxiety – Garden Organic wasn’t showing up. Membership wasn’t regenerating, posing severe challenges for the future.
The community is everything for an organisation like Garden Organic. So to create branding that genuinely serves and represents this community, we needed to engage and involve them in the process. We ran a series of workshops for employees, stakeholders and members, and asked them what they thought Garden Organic was, should be, could be, purpose, challenges, hopes. It delivered incredible insight on the business needs and gave us a clearer picture of the job the branding had to do.
Most of Garden Organic’s comms are generated in-house or by volunteers. So our system had to be simple, accessible and easy to use. We delivered a shed full of tools that were fit for purpose, and clear guidelines on how to use them.
The brand refresh has helped rekindle some of that early progressive DNA, appealing to a younger and more active audience, and creating the sense of a movement.
We’ve kept everything feeling real, down-to-earth, grounded. We’ve celebrated the love of detail (that sometimes borders on the obsessive), the humanity, the home-made, the hand-made, the glorious imperfections, the authentic and organic. And there’s a nod to roots, legacy and heritage; a constant reminder of the deep pool of knowledge, respect and trust – earned over decades – that is at the heart of the movement.
Another useful tool we added to the shed was a suite of bespoke illustrations.
Created to give a ‘human touch’ and a sense of flow to content, they’re informal, joyful, expressive and gloriously imperfect.
“The whole team at Liquid have been fantastic, showing incredible attention to detail throughout the process. The brand is now really coming to life across everything we produce, and we’ve received a huge amount of positive feedback from both staff and external stakeholders.”
Lisa – Garden Organic
