Shifting into soup mode🍲

Okay warp speed!! Can't believe it's already October. Team Emerald loves October and all the glory that is soup season. We've kicked off 2 new projects and completed an all time record amount of Design Days in Q3.

Charlee is heading to San Franciso for a Webflow Conference in mid October and Leah heads back to Oaxaca, Mexico with her sisters at the end of the month.

It's Q4 and a great time to shift into 2025 planning mode.Thinking about goals and budgeting for 2025? Would a brand refresh, new website or sweet interactive design help you reach some of those goals? We'd love to brainstorm with you, grab time to chat here.

Gotta focus.
​Charlee & Leah

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From our #random slack channel

• Pinterest Fall 2024 trend report: Searches for Japanese style are up 200%+

• Elite graphic design humor: shoutout to cyan's PR team​

• How to get your ideas to spread​

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🔦 CLIENT SPOTLIGHT

​Career Pathways Initiative (CPI) was founded to equip first-generation, low-income college students with the skills necessary to secure—and succeed in—careers that open doors to upward socioeconomic mobility.

We designed a brand and website so CPI could fully launch their program with success.

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Brand Design

The brand was inspired by the NYC subway navigation system. NYC subway has such an iconic design system and is very clean, clear and informative. CPI helps students navigate their careers, often ending up in cities like NYC, so we loved the parallels there.

For any design history nerds: how design legend Massimo Vignelli fixed the NYC subway navigation.

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The arrow evolution

We went through many iterations of the arrow, testing out proper thickness, angle and if it should be connected or not!

Final logo

The full brand and logo system are designed to be dynamic and flexible depending on the situation. In some cases just the highlighter green arrow avatar is enough (social media), and others cases the primary logo with CPI in the iconic bubbles (website, swag) is better. There's also the fully spelled out name for when CPI needs full legibility.

Color palette

The CPI color palette is green with pops of blue. The grounding greens indicate growth, social mobility and professionalism, while the pops of highlighter green and bright blue keep the brand feeling youthful.

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Website Design & Development

We wrote, designed and built a fully interactive landing page, launched in time for the start of the 2024 school year (take a scroll through!). Their website is critical for conversations with organizations and students.

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CURRENTLY

📓 Leah is practicing Spanish before heading back to Oaxaca, Mexico at the end of October for Día de los Muertos—and humbled by the challenges of learning a new language

🍒 Charlee has been harvesting ground cherries and is planning to make some ground cherry salsa! Did you know: ground cherries are not related to cherries, they're closer to tomatillos!