The Urban Lot
2023
Brand Identity | Naming | Web Design | Motion Design
The Urban Lot is a personal project that emerged from a deep-rooted passion for urban design, sustainability, and gardening. I saw the potential to transform and reimagine neglected urban spaces and went on a spree, planting wildflowers on a café rooftop, cultivating mushrooms in abandoned retail space and turning a parking lot into an allotment. What started as an array of individual projects turned into an idea: what if more of us reclaimed urban environment through individual efforts?
Challenge
The Urban Lot aims to reimagine how sustainability and environmentalism look like. A lot of initiatives end up reusing the same tropes and narratives due to the lack of resources and funding, and end up looking stale and uninspiring. The challenge was to create a fresh identity that resonated with the core demographic and encouraged them to take ownership of shared urban spaces.
Solution
The identity starts from the name: “The Urban Lot” has a dual meaning of urban community and an urban piece of land. I devised an adaptable visual system that can be toned down or up to accommodate all touchpoints. Two main colours, Tarmac Black and Newspaper White, form the high-contrast base of the colour palette, supplemented by attention-grabbing neons. User-generated and content-rich website achieves a uniform editorial newspaper look through the monochromatic image treatment, and extends the idea of transforming urban spaces by employing a hover transition from monochrome to colour.
