Landscaping and garden careBranding

A business designed to grow

Brand identity with its own manual for a Bay Area landscaping company, applied across uniform, cap, business cards, signage, flags and vehicle — and then carried onto the screen with their website.

Client: Nieto Gardens LLC
Business type: Landscaping and garden care
Service area: Branding
Location: Bay Area, California
Year: 2026

Services delivered

Brand Design
Identity Manual
Stationery
Uniforms & Textiles
Signage & Flags
Vehicle Wrap
Web Design Guidelines
Web Design & Development
Accessibility & Contrast

24pages of manual: grid construction, clear space, reduction down to 20%, palette with hex values, typography, pattern and the six ways to break the brand

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The challenge

Fidel Nieto had spent years building gardens across the Bay Area, and his company had earned its name the hard way, one truck and one client at a time. The problem with growing like that is the brand starts passing through many hands at once: whoever embroiders the polo, whoever prints the cards, whoever wraps the truck and whoever builds the website each solve it their own way, because nobody has given them a rule. It wasn't badly done; it just wasn't written down. And a brand that isn't written down drifts away from itself without anyone ever deciding to let it.

What we did

We started from the mark: the “NG” initials resolved in a single continuous stroke, built on a grid from the capital “N”, so it reads and sticks regardless of size. That same letter defines the clear space —the height of the “N” kept free on all four sides— and the reduction is tested down to 20%, below which the lockup stops reading. We closed it into a twenty-four-page manual: six variants of the mark for six situations, two primary greens with their hex written down (#ABC837 and #2F5529), three secondaries, use over backgrounds, monochrome versions, the Varien typeface, and a leaf pattern that grows out of the brand's own organic character. Plus a full page drawing the six ways to break it, so nobody has to find them on their own. Then we brought it down to what gets touched —cards, cap, polo, A-frame sign, flags and the vehicle wrap— and from there onto the screen, where the lime green forced a decision of its own: it reads 1.90 contrast on white and 9.16 on the dark green, so on the website it works as an accent by day and as the lead color by night.

The result

A brand that no longer depends on who applies it: the polo embroidery, the card Fidel leaves at a house, the A-frame he plants on the sidewalk and the side of the truck all come from the same file and the same rule. The client who watches the truck go by and later opens the website recognizes the same thing in both places — which is, in the end, what having a brand written down is for.

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The brand manual

The manual was delivered to the client in Spanish; the pages shown here are the originals.

Two initials, one stroke

The mark is built from the “NG” initials, worked in a simple continuous stroke so the design is easy to recognize and easy to remember. The overall shape is clean and free of unnecessary detail, which is what lets it work equally well as embroidery or as a favicon. And the construction isn't left to the eye: the logo is built on a grid generated from the capital “N”, so the proportions hold in any application.

The “N” measures the air, and 20% is the floor

The clear space isn't estimated: it equals the height of the mark's capital “N”, and that margin stays free on all four sides across every variant. The reduction is tested too, not assumed. At 100% and 60% the full logo still reads; 20% is the floor below which the lockup compromises its legibility. Having that number written down is what avoids the argument the day someone wants to put it on a pen.

Six variants for six situations

The primary logo is the vertical version, with the name beneath the symbol. The horizontal lockup takes over where the space is wide and short —a website header, the side of a truck. The two secondary versions simplify the whole when less weight is needed. The symbol works alone, for embroidery, stamps and social media. And the favicon closes the series at the size where nothing else fits.

Two greens, each with its own job

The light green (#ABC837) is the color the brand is recognized by from a distance: the one in the pattern, on the flags, in the accents. The dark green (#2F5529) is the one that carries: backgrounds, blocks and the pieces where text has to read. Each arrives with its hex, RGB and CMYK written out — which is what makes the color on the truck and the color on the screen the same color, and not two distant cousins.

The secondaries, which are what bring order

Alongside the two greens run three support colors: platinum (#F1F1F1) for backgrounds and breathing room, carbon black (#1A1A1A) for long text and the surfaces where green doesn't belong, and soft fawn (#C4A572) as the warm tone that breaks things up when everything starts turning too green. They don't compete with the brand: they let it work.

Varien, and the leaves that come from it

The brand typeface is Varien Regular, chosen for its clarity and its legibility across different sizes and surfaces. Its soft, slightly curved terminals, set next to the mark, subtly recall organic forms close to leaves — and that's where the visual resource comes from: a simple, repeating leaf pattern that reinforces the connection to nature and to garden work. The pattern accompanies the mark without stealing from it, and it's what unifies a business card, a flag and the side of a vehicle.

Six ways to break it

The manual devotes a full page to what isn't done, drawn out rather than merely stated: changing the proportions, rotating the mark, recoloring it, altering its elements, swapping the typeface, and placing it over an image where the figure-to-ground contrast doesn't hold up. They're not there to limit whoever is designing, but so the brand survives every pair of hands it's going to pass through.

The project in pictures

The brand, now on screen

The website decision that comes straight out of the manual.

Day and night

The brand's light green reads 1.90 contrast on white and 9.16 on the dark green. Measured, not estimated. That single figure decided how the site behaves: by day the lime is reserved for accents and the dark green carries the weight, exactly as the manual dictates; by night the lime becomes the lead color and finally does real work. These aren't two toggle themes, they're two complete versions of the same palette —and the visitor can stay on automatic and let their phone decide.