Thistle Hills Identity
BACKGROUND
Thistle Hills is a nonprofit organization in Coatesville, Pennsylvania that helps women who are survivors of trafficking, prostitution, and addiction transform their lives by providing them with opportunities to heal and vital resources for empowerment—a safe place to live, a meaningful job, and a lifelong sisterhood of support.
As part of the Thistle National Network created by Thistle Farms (based in Nashville), Thistle Hills had the challenge of taking a brand positioning framework that was already in place and making it their own with messaging and a visual identity.
(Work done at Untuck with John Saal, Amy Saal, and Hollis Campbell)
We led Thistle Hills through discovery exercises to clearly define the layout of their challenges, their audience members, and goals.
After working together through a visual vocabulary exercise to build consensus, we agreed that the goal was to create a bold system that communicated aspects of strength, intensity and healing.
As part of the identity, we created several supporting elements such as thistle leaves and abstract thistle blooms that ultimately led us to the mark itself—a thistle blossom.
The blossom represents the tight-knit community that Coatesville and Thistle Hills offer—one that is supportive and healing. The color palette was inspired by the thistle and more generally, nature in springtime—embodying the idea of renewal and rebirth.
The graphic elements are intentionally light and ethereal.
We wanted them to impart a feeling of spirituality and weightlessness (qualities we hope that women in the Thistle Hills program might feel as they heal from their trauma). Watercolors are a perfect backdrop for this identity in that they capture the idea of change and healing through differences in color and depth, with each one being unique and not entirely predictable.
We created a library of social media templates that were simple and easily editable, keeping in mind that Thistle Hills would likely not be posting photos of people for some time.
We also set Thistle Hills up with all of the materials that they would need to speak with community members about their mission.
Tools like an informational brochure, Powerpoint template, and easily editable website prepared them and gave them confidence and the language to speak about their work to the community and potential donors.
