Parks Alliance of Louisville

The Challenge

The Parks Alliance of Louisville is bold, insightful, and forward-thinking. They are fundamentally changing the way we view our local parks as they champion equitable spending in our community’s green spaces. They were deserving of a name and identity that capture their lively attitude, courageous spirit, and commitment to changing Louisville for the better.

The Concept

We've been in partnership with the Parks Alliance of Louisville since early 2020, working to support their non-profit and event marketing. Along the way, we've gotten to know them - and help them hone their new mission: Parks For All.

We collectively recognized the need for a stronger brand identity and naming convention that truly reflects the powerful and important work this organization does for our community. Through our brand strategy process, we executed a new brand concept called "What Parks Should Be": The Parks Alliance of Louisville is the only organization in town that’s bold enough and insightful enough and forward thinking enough to fundamentally change the way we view parks and champion equitable spending in our community’s green spaces. “A New Era of Parks for All.”

Visual Identity

Parks are the one civic institution truly intended for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, socioeconomic status, or religious background. The Parks Alliance of Louisville's mission to bring public green spaces to historically marginalized neighborhoods and communities served as inspiration for this vibrant, whimsical, accessible and approachable brand identity.

The mark conveys a lot of meaning: The converging of lines represents the connection between neighbors – the forming of community. The allusion to a spark represents forward thinking, new ideas, and change. With the addition of color, this simple shape becomes the sun, a symbol of passion and the source of joy for many people when enjoying our city’s green spaces.

The Name

Our deep collaboration with the Louisville Parks Foundation led us to see that their mission was bigger and more progressive than their current name implied.

Their mission is to unite all of Louisville in the drive for equitable funding for all parks. They are no longer the quiet "foundation", but rather a leader with a rallying cry for our public spaces: Parks for All.

With the knowledge and insight that our Brand Strategy process provided, the decision was easily made to remove "foundation" from their name. After executing market research, we learned of a similar organization in Indianapolis that had recently changed their name to "Parks Alliance of Indianapolis". A quick call proved that they had been following our work here in Louisville and expressed interest in utilizing the "Parks for All" campaign. It was a synchronous moment- two passionate non-profits coming together to share ideas and creative work for the greater good of our communities!

The Website

Digital outreach is key to the Parks Alliance of Louisville, and telegraphing to the mission and projects to our community is critical to its success.

Leveraging the client's existing website built on an off-the-shelf solution, we crafted a user experience that matches the new colorful, geometrically-inspired brand identity - in both layout and motion.

Generous spacing and natural-feeling load-in animations mimic the open spaces and soft breezes you can find in the park around the corner.

"VIA's intensive process to dig deep into who we are, and where we wanted to go, brought us to a look that truly reflects our mission and vision in the most incredibly creative way. We could not have asked for a better partner!"

- Brooke Pardue, Parks Alliance of Louisville President