A New Era for Evergreen: A Look Behind the Rebrand

Evergreen is a term often used in marketing to describe strategies and tactics that are long-standing and unaffected by changing trends, markets or audiences. As marketing professionals, we hold tightly to evergreen content because of the significant impact it can have in campaigns and strategy.   

It’s a given that many would think Evergreen Strategic Communications was named for this reason. 

However, in many spiritual traditions, evergreen represents energy, hope, enduring life, resilience, and strength among much more which is where we find Evergreen Strategic’s origin story. 

I launched Evergreen Strategic Communications nearly seven years ago. When I look back over that time, there’s a mix of emotions of how I got here. Evergreen came to be as I was leaving a toxic workplace with no new job plans and a desperate need for rest and calm. I was mentally drained, physically ill, and needed something good.  I started this journey by juggling a few small projects with a baby babbling in the background and have somehow transformed to a full team serving clients across the midwest and up and down the east coast—and that baby is now in kindergarten! 

There’s been highs and lows, many, many mistakes, and questions about giving up, but there’s also been happy dances, new skills learned, and the growth of a thriving small business. 

Time for New Energy

Last fall as I was coming back from my third maternity leave, I really looked at this marketing agency and the support we provide to nonprofits. I thought about the mindful, steady, and strategic decisions that has transformed Evergreen. It is the same approach our team uses every day with our clients and it was clear that the Evergreen brand no longer served and represented our agency in the way that it should. 

We are intentional about building relationships with our clients and call many friends and we envisioned brand visuals that represent the warm and approachable environment we strive to create with every client interaction. Simply, at the heart of our agency we remain focused on supporting the organizations that are making true impact in the world and putting them front and center. 

So we breathed renewed life into our logo, website and other visuals. I wanted us to get back to our origin story and recreate ourselves to represent new energy, resilience, and strength.

Behind the Design with Swell Design

When it came time to move into the redesign phase of Evergreen, I wanted to be very intentional with using an outside brand agency that could look at our agency with fresh eyes. Sure, we could do it ourselves, but I wanted a design team that could be fully dedicated to our glow up. I have long admired Swell Design’s brand work and knew that I wanted to work with their team when the time came. My guidance was simple: I wanted a professional yet approachable brand that represented the warmth and knowledge we bring to our clients. 

We asked CEO and lead designer of Swell Design, Sarah Wells, to share her thought process when creating our new brand visuals and here’s what she said:

“When working with Emily at Evergreen Strategic, we wanted to focus on creating a brand identity that accurately reflected the high quality of work they provide their clients. When beginning to explore the initial design direction, I knew that I wanted the focus to be on the typography. For this concept, I chose a serif-sans hybrid that blends classic letter structure with modern refinement. To give a subtle nod to the previous brand, we opted to keep “evergreen” in an all lowercase structure.

With this lowercase treatment, the wordmark felt approachable and beautifully balanced, with the descender of the “g” acting as a natural visual anchor to create symmetry and harmony across the name (with 4 letters on either side of the “g”). 

That open space within the lower section of the “g” then became an opportunity to subtly integrate a custom leaf motif, weaving the evergreen symbolism directly into the letterform rather than adding a separate icon. Paired with a richer, more vibrant color direction, the final concept feels intentional, elevated, and cohesive, balancing strategic professionalism with organic warmth. After establishing the primary brand identity, I proceeded to build out the full brand kit with varying layouts, color variations, and submark elements.

The final result beautifully achieved our goal of creating a mark that feels strategic, balanced, and deeply aligned with the heart of Evergreen Strategic.”

Is it time for a rebrand for your nonprofit?

We often talk with new clients about brand refreshes. We tidy up messaging, maybe tweak a logo, and review website copy. It’s an opportunity to do a gut check—is our brand still aligned to who we are, what we stand for, and what we do? If your organization is growing, it’s easy to get off balance and it doesn’t necessarily call for a big milestone in your organization to consider a rebrand or brand refresh. For me, I really sat with our former brand visuals and saw the disconnect between the original Evergreen and the Evergreen working to make an impact each day with our mission-based clients.  If you think it may be time to relook at your nonprofit, education, or faith-based organization’s brand, we’d love to talk to you.