Back in 2012, I caught wind that the City of Atlanta had reached out to a few agencies about a potential rebrand. I wasn’t part of that shortlist—but I saw an opportunity.
I wanted to make a name for myself in the local design community. More than that, I genuinely love this city. So I submitted my own rebrand proposal as an independent designer—not for fame or money, but because I felt like Atlanta deserved something beautiful, thoughtful, and distinctly ours.
Without a formal client process, I wrote my own creative brief. The goal? Create a visual identity that:
This wasn’t about just slapping a logo on a letterhead—it was about civic pride.
Atlanta is inseparable from the peach. We’re literally bursting with Peachtree streets—over 140 of them. The fruit is a symbol of Southern charm, history, and flavor. But I didn’t want to use the same dusty clip-art version of a peach we’ve all seen.
So I reimagined it: smooth curves, abstract shapes, and a minimalist take that still felt familiar. The result was something modern, versatile, and adaptive—just like Atlanta itself.
The rebrand wasn’t just a logo—it was a full system designed to scale:
Everything was represented through visual mockups and brand guidelines, all tailored to real-world use cases.
I submitted the work to the city. It didn’t go anywhere officially (as you’d probably expect from a government process), but the project did exactly what I hoped:
It opened doors. It sparked conversations. And within the design community, it got me noticed.
A few peers gave me some incredibly kind feedback—encouraging me to keep pushing on civic and systems-based design work. That was enough to make it worth it.
This project taught me more than I expected—not just about branding a city, but about working with (and around) government processes. If I did it again today, I’d:
At the end of the day, this was an homage to a city that has given me so much. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
