Heartland MPO

Client Summary

Heartland MPO is the primary regional transportation planning agency for the Anderson Urbanized Area, including the city of Anderson, the communities of Madison County, and the towns of Daleville and Fortville. As a metropolitan and regional planning organization, Heartland MPO identifies, plans, and awards funds for the transportation needs of communities within their service area, with the goal of improving residents’ quality of life through various improvement projects.

Their Challenge

Heartland MPO recently changed their name from Madison County Council of Governments (MCCOG). Their old brand name had been an acronym that most people hadn’t heard of and didn’t understand, causing confusion for their audience. To complement their new name, Heartland MPO wanted a redesigned brand image to better express their role in the community. They wanted their new logo to appear clean, modern, and professional.

Our Strategy

To rebrand Heartland MPO, our team needed to create a logo and a brand style guide for their new brand image that felt professional yet approachable. We first conducted preliminary interviews with members of the Heartland MPO team to uncover their differentiators, services, strengths, challenges, and audience. Our goal was to create a new logo that included a fresh color palette and a graphic element to communicate the work Heartland MPO does with natural environments and transportation.

Their new logo was designed to portray Heartland MPO as a multidisciplinary business for transportation planning, landscape architecture, and data analysis. The logo mark was inspired by aerial photos of round-abouts creating directional paths that flow around a central leaf. The color palette selected for their logo combines green, blue, and orange to communicate balance, professionalism, and positive energy. With their logo mark, our goal was to harness the power of symbolism to provide visual cues without leaning into a clip art feel.
Following the approval of their new logo, we developed an in-depth brand style guide. This guide provided the Heartland MPO team with detailed examples of how best to implement their logo, mark, typeface, and primary and secondary colors in print and web applications. We included specific visual illustrations of the most effective ways to use their new brand image in different contexts.
Finally, to help kickstart the implementation of their new brand image, we provided brand identity touchpoints in the form of redesigned letterhead, social media profiles, email signatures, and business card design. By taking care of the admin work to recreate these elements, we helped the Heartland MPO team begin featuring their new brand image quickly and easily.

The Result

The outcome of the Heartland MPO project is a new brand image that clearly communicates the services, values, and tone for their brand in an attractive and professional way. The Heartland MPO team was pleased with their new logo and loved the color palette chosen. Having our team take on this project allowed their designers to focus on other important tasks and provided them with a fresh perspective from an outside company. Heartland MPO now utilizes their new brand image to transparently communicate who they are and what they do to their audience.

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Logo

We designed a new logo was designed to portray Heartland MPO as a multidisciplinary business for transportation planning, landscape architecture, and data analysis.

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Brand Style Guide

We developed an in-depth brand style guide. This guide provided the Heartland MPO team with detailed examples of how best to implement their logo, mark, typeface, and primary and secondary colors in print and web applications.

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Brand Identity Touchpoints

We provided brand identity touchpoints in the form of redesigned letterhead, social media profiles, email signatures, and business card design to help kickstart the implementation of their new brand image.

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Logo Mark

The logo mark we developed was inspired by aerial photos of round-abouts creating directional paths that flow around a central leaf.