LA Times Plants - Little Wins

LA TIMES PLANTS REBRAND

Creating a vibrant visual identity for LA Times Plants that’s ready to bloom across social, merch, and beyond.

LA Times Plants is the go-to resource for Los Angeles plant lovers — a dedicated hub for gardening tips, plant care wisdom, and everything green. As the division expanded its online store and audience, they needed a visual identity that could keep pace with their growth and reflect the joy and energy of the plant community they serve.

Art Director Martina Ibáñez came to us with a clear vision: draw from the vibrant, funky energy of 1960s psychedelic art to create a brand that felt both nature-inspired and polished. We developed a logo system, color palette, social media backgrounds, and a set of brand illustrations that gave LA Times Plants a distinctive look they could grow with — from Instagram posts to merch. The result? A refresh that's garnered hundreds of thousands of views and new a merch line that brings the brand into people's homes.

SCOPE

— Logo Identity System
— Type & Color
— Social Media Graphics
— Illustrations

The Idea

The movement, similar to the Art Nouveau movement that happened nearly a century earlier, started as a form of protest against the industrial and technological age.

In the late 1800s, it was an attempt to keep real art–one that intricately reflected life’s vibrancy–alive. As artists began to use flat, decorative patterns, earthy color palettes, organic and plant motifs, the movement’s style was defined. Resonating with artists in the 1900s, the style was built on through vibrant colors and wavy lines to capture the energy of the times.

Keeping this history in mind, we created an identity that pulled from these organic, curvilinear and vibrant art styles of the past – something that felt very fitting for the newspaper’s Plants section.