Project Overview
La Madre Tierra is an online hub that resources Indigenous and Latine communities fighting climate change and environmental injustice — communities carrying the heaviest climate consequences with the least funding. By 2023, it had grown from a project into a nexus connecting dozens of member organizations.
My Role
Brand Identity, Illustration System, Template Design
The Challenge
The organization had become a network, but its identity was still a portrait: one detailed illustration of a face. It couldn't scale to a favicon, extend into documents or decks, or stand for dozens of member organizations without privileging one culture's imagery over the rest. Every new material was built from scratch.
Insight
Cultural character is what makes a brand land — but motifs borrowed from any single tradition would have excluded most of the network. The shared ground was elemental: water, growth, land, cycles. Abstract enough to belong to everyone, specific enough to feel like something.
Impact
Ten months after handoff, La Madre Tierra launched its first national virtual convening — bringing together Indigenous and Latine leaders and climate-justice advocates — on the identity built for it. Three years on the system still runs the organization's live site, decks, and documents, and has expanded well past what shipped: a full multi-section site, ongoing published research, and materials produced by a team with no designer
