CASE STUDY

ADOBE GREEN MONDAY

My Role: Brand Design + Communications + Illustration
Marketing/Production: Sydney Clark
Communications Manager: Emilie Zanger

Green Monday is a movement that promotes sustainable living by enabling companies, restaurants, schools, and the general public to join in efforts to reduce our collective environmental impact. One impactful way of doing this is to eat a plant-based diet one day per week. Green Monday is not about encouraging vegetarianism or requiring a drastic or overnight lifestyle change. Instead, it aims to educate about reducing our carbon footprint and improving our overall health by taking small, approachable steps.

In partnership with Adobe and Bon Appetit, I worked to design the brand system for this international program that spans 23 Adobe sites around the world.

GOAL:
TO CREATE A BRAND MARK FOR THE ADOBE GREEN MONDAY PROGRAM THAT EXCITES AND STARTS CONVERSATIONS AROUND THE INITIATIVE WHILE INCREASING AWARENESS OF SMALL CHANGES THAT MAKE A BIG IMPACT.

BRIEF HIGHLIGHTS

• Global appeal, with consideration of 23 specific international sites

• Stakeholders: Workplace Experience, Bon Appetit/Partner, Brand

• Energetic, fun vibe that excites and further increases employee activation

• For use in all media platforms including banners, informational signage, T-shirts, marketing collateral, menus, and kiosks

• Create a visual language that supports internal brand hierarchy

• Conveys essence of the global impact with an upbeat tone

RESEARCH & CONCEPTUALIZATION

The goal of raising awareness and inspiring people about the benefits of making small changes that have a large impact on our planet can start on a person’s plate. I used basic elements of a plate, earth, and plants as the foundation for my concepts. Imagery that was provided during our discovery process conveyed a bright, fresh and cheerful vibe. I wanted this to be a particularly organic process when developing the visuals, considering different perspectives of our ecosystem. The concepts that I presented were:

1. FRACTAL FOODIE: I made an acrylic paint color palette from the discovery food imagery, and turned the palette into digital fractals that I manipulated into the text.
2. CLUSTER FRESH: Using cellular plant drawings, I recreated them with pops of color based on some of the presentation imagery, conveying a juicy, fruity feeling.
3. JUNGLE VEGGIES: I made jungle-like patterns from vegetable illustrations and technical gemstone drawings.


INSPIRATION IMAGERY + PRELIMINARY SKETCHES + INITIAL COMPS

Fractal Food and Cluster Fresh were selected for further development. Taking components from each, I created an updated Fractal Foodie V2. During this process, the Adobe Master Brand defined new protocols for internal brands and font usage. At this point, we had to revisit how we would employ our favorite elements while using the proprietary Adobe Clean font. I took the fractal elements and made an earth icon and added a cutlery motif to the wordmark. After this was refined with brand review feedback, we finalized the concept and created communication touchpoints and iconography that included the fractals.

Green Monday embraces the positive adoption of sustainable practices, rather than emphasizing what is being avoided or given up. The goal is to raise awareness and inspire people about the benefits of making small changes that have a large impact on our planet.

The following Adobe sites celebrated Green Monday in 2019: Austin, Bangalore, Bucharest, Denver, Dublin, Emeryville, Hamburg, Lehi, London, Los Angeles, Maidenhead, Newton, New York, Noida, Ottawa, Portland, Paris, San Francisco, San Jose, San Mateo, Seattle, Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo.

RESULTS WITH IMPACT

Building upon the momentum of Adobe's Meatless Monday events in 2017 and 2018, Green Monday 2019 was Adobe's single largest shared food experience, impacting over 10,000 employees at 23 sites around the world. In 2018, 16 sites around the world participated in Meatless Monday.

The Workplace Experience Programs Team — in partnership with Brand Purpose and Global Site Operations partners at sites worldwide — presented a variety of special programming around the positive environmental impacts of choosing more plant-forward meals.

Adobe sites around the world celebrated Green Monday in a variety of ways. In North America, sites with employee cafés (including San Jose, San Francisco, Lehi, and Seattle) enjoyed a variety of vibrant, plant-based specials at breakfast and lunch, inspired by chefs who are leaders in the plant-forward movement. Guests also received free dessert — a rich, 100% plant-based chocolate pudding — and a 15% incentive coupon toward their next meal in the café if they opted for a plant-based Green Monday meal.

Not only was the meal itself a special treat for Adobe employees, but it offered colleagues a chance to come together and share time away from the pressures of work. “Sharing a meal is the original social networking,” and Adobe employees benefited from sitting down together and breaking bread.

The impact of Green Monday extended beyond the lunch table. Through a partnership with the Brand Purpose team and Action Teams around the world, employees at 20 Adobe sites had the opportunity to learn about the carbon impacts of their food choices. At educational tabling events, employees were encouraged to guess the carbon impact of a typical lunch, which was tailored to reflect foods common in their region. The closest guesser from each site was awarded a cookbook about plant-based cooking. In addition, Adobe's Brand Purpose team awarded a $5000 grant to the Good Food Institute, an organization that is dedicated to creating a healthy, humane, and sustainable food supply.