The brief

Lush Landscape and Garden Design was founded in 2007 by Anna Barker and myself. As an unknown startup, I thought its branding needed to be distinctively different to help it get noticed.

Research showed that the vast majority of garden design and landscaping logos were green, and usually featured flowers, trees or garden tools. To stand out, I decided to make the logo a vibrant red.

The design

For the first 12 years, the logo remained red – although it did go through a couple of reworkings to simplify it. By 2014 we changed the wording to Lush Garden Design, which matched the trading name and the web address. The red identity became very recognisable, especially on their van livery.

Old Lush Garden Design van livery and banner designs

But by 2018/19 we decided the red branding needed to change. The company was taking on bigger and more lucrative projects, and the branding felt like it belonged to the older startup version of the business, aimed at a set of customers the business was leaving behind.

A more sophisticated brand

So in 2019 I completely redesigned the entire brand – the logo, colour palette, website and printed marketing materials. The logo was simplified further, the lettering was improved and the old red palette was replaced with a more sophisticated aubergine purple, with a green, light purple and grey supplementary colour palette. The brand typefaces were changed to Playfair and Azo Sans, and the website received a complete makeover to include large galleries and personal branding photography.

The resulting brand has been in place for the last seven years. It’s a flexible branding system that works smoothly across web, social media, print, exhibitions and clothing, and is perfect for an ambitious, growing business.