The Challenge
When I was approached about developing a new logo system and style guide for Nevada County, they were about to embark on a website revamp with their vendor CivicPlus. The refresh would be focused on improving user experience and accessibility, but they faced a major challenge. For years, they have been operating without an official County style guide in place. With only the County seal as an identifying mark and a decentralized communications team, many departments had developed their own logos and branding to suit their needs, adding significant confusion to identifying and navigating County services.
The Path Forward
After extensive conversations with leadership and polling of County staff, the communications team and I identified a strong need for a centralized visual system for not just the website, but for all of County communications. They wanted a mark that could be adapted to suit a lot of different needs, that was representative of the County's mission and values. The system would have to be flexible, and the brand rollout customized with significant capacity limitations in mind. When we reached a consensus on a brand vision, we embarked on a year-long process to build this new system, bring it to life on the website, and successfully launched it in April 2022.
Below are selected pages from the County's final style guide, which was used to guide the website re-design and provided to all County staff members as a reference tool for navigating their new identity system.
