Time To Fly Designs

05/29/2026

BRANDING, PART 3.

I was just reading a great reflection on color in branding on the Dreamstime stock photography website. I’d like to share some of the rather astute observations made by the author, and how these relate to what I did for the Ag Allies branding project.

Color often frames perception in almost an instant, even before language with the meanings varying depending on context, culture and application. In branding, color is not just decoration, it is part of your brand’s tone of voice.

Hue (red, green, blue or yellow) is often what people think of most when we talk about color, but in branding the saturation, contrast and temperature (warm vs cool) of your color palette matter as much as the hue (Monbb87). Saturation can create feelings of immediacy and energy whereas a more muted palette may feel softer, friendlier or more reflective.

As I have mentioned before, consistency matters because the repetition becomes memory. Your brand becomes recognizable by its colors. Think of Tiffany green or the red and yellow of McDonald’s. But as mentioned in the Dreamstime article, this consistency does not have to lead to rigidity. A palette can allow flexibility while still preserving the brand identity. Typically, brands will use a palette of three to five colors, with two serving as the primary brand colors and a third as an accent color. If using five colors, the last two can be used as backgrounds or text colors.

Ag Allies wanted to convey a friendly, passionate, relationship-based tone of voice that evoked feelings of trust and partnership. They are a conservation organization with a target audience of mostly farmers, land trusts and other landowners, most of whom are likely Generation X or older. While green is often associated with nature and was a logical choice, we softened the tone from their older logo to create a more relaxed, calm and friendly feeling. The other colors in the palette were also chosen with tone of voice, target audience and the organization’s purpose in mind. In addition, contrast and accessibility were considered in the final choices. Having five colors in the palette has allowed the flexibility to use both the green and the slate blue as primary colors, and the deep purple, light brown and yellow as accent, background and text colors in brand materials such as their website and educational brochures, as seen here.

“The strongest palettes are not just pretty. They are usable, memorable, and emotionally coherent…..They shape expectation, tone, memory, and identity. They tell the audience how to feel before language takes over, and they remain in the mind after language has been forgotten.” (Monbb87)

Many thanks to the following author for her thoughtful and well-written article! I really enjoyed it!

Monbb87. “What Do Colors Mean in Design and Branding?” Dreamstime. 13 May 2026. https://www.dreamstime.com/blog/what-do-colors-mean-in-design-and-branding-77875.

Contact me here through Facebook or from my website at www.time2flydesigns.com

Learn more about Ag Allies at www.AgAllies.org

05/25/2026

BRANDING, PART 2.

Once you or your business/organization have chosen brand colors, typography and imagery, it is important to apply those consistently across all platforms. This helps your brand to become recognizable and this increases trust.

For Ag Allies, I did this on their website and then re-designed their printed materials to reflect their new brand. They had a flyer and several brochures that had been designed by different people over the years and so they had different colors, different fonts and different styles.

The flyer was two white pages with a lot of text and several square photos scattered throughout. For the re-design, I added a background photo of a grassland that I had taken, and reduced the opacity to allow the text to be readable on top of it. I added a headline bar with the new logo at the top. This creates some hierarchy and draws the eye to the headline. I found some photos of the two Ag Allies focal species and removed the backgrounds. This took the birds out of their "squares", so to speak, and allowed me to use them as a focal point on each page. There is still a lot of text, but now your eye is drawn to the birds and you want to read it. Lastly, I created some colored boxes for the "pull quotes" to set that information apart from the rest of the text.

Now, Ag Allies has a beautiful flyer that draws attention!

To learn more about Ag Allies and their important work, please visit their website at www.agallies.org

To contact me, send me a message on Facebook or from my website at www.time2flydesigns.com

05/20/2026

We all have a personal brand, whether we are conscious of it or not. It is how we show up in the world: our personality, the way we dress, the colors we like to wear, the way we talk, etc… Businesses and other organizations have their own branding, too and smart ones are conscious of and cultivate their brand. Think of any of your favorite stores, restaurants, or products and you’ll see branding. Colors, fonts, tone of voice, images. All contribute to how you see and feel about that brand.

For the past several months, I have been working with an organization called Ag Allies to help them develop their branding. Ag Allies is an organization dedicated to protecting Maine’s grassland birds through collaboration with private landowners. The project seeks to build lasting conservation partnerships with farmers, emphasizing their role as land stewards and connecting them to the natural resources their land supports.

Starting with one person and as a program of the Somerset County Soil and Water Conservation District, Ag Allies is now statewide. They will be celebrating their 10th field season this summer and as the program continues to grow, it was an appropriate time to work on branding and to make sure that they are showing up consistently across all platforms, whether it be printed materials, reports, social media, signs or their website. Consistency helps to build trust among your client or customer base.

The process starts with your graphic designer getting to know your business or organization. They will research your target audience to learn about their preferences and dislikes. A good graphic designer will then work with you to choose or update your logo, choose a color palette, choose fonts and images that reflect your business’ or organization's values and vision. All of this is usually outlined in a “Brand Guide” to help your employees stay consistent and on brand.

For Ag Allies, one of the first things I did was to update the logo. Their old logo was terrific and served them very well, but it needed a bit of a refresh. Again, since consistency is key to building trust with clients, I didn’t want to change the logo too much. Just update it. I started with an update to the Bobolink. Then, once I had the brand colors and fonts, I was able to update the logo color to the softer green of the brand palette and straighten the text on the circle. I also moved the "Ag Allies" name to the top to make it more noticeable and Voila!

I chose the brand color palette for Ag Allies from some of the founder’s own photographs. The new colors evoke nature, growth, optimism and innovation and should be very appealing to their target audience.

Please visit the newly updated Ag Allies website to see more about their work at www.agallies.org.

And to see more of my work please visit www.time2flydesigns.com

Ag Allies

03/16/2026

I recently finished a business card design for a soon-to-be launched educational YouTube channel called "When There Were Birds". Adrienne already had a beautiful logo created by Jada Fitch (jadafitch.com).

After experimenting with colored backgrounds and trying to fit text without it being too small and difficult to read, I decided to completely change tactics and settled on this design solution. The white background on the front allows the logo to shine. By placing the logo on the right, I could then place Adrienne’s taglines on the upper left, so the bird’s bill is pointing to the text. The placement of both elements draws your eye right to the intersection of both features. I used colors from the logo for the taglines, using the red to help the word “Hope” stand out from the rest.

On the back, the green background taken from the logo color really helps the QR code for Adrienne’s YouTube channel to pop. The contrasting white background then draws your eye, and the red text draws it immediately to Adrienne’s name at the top and then to her email. The use of colors from the logo throughout helps to maintain a consistent look and feel to the business card and ties all the elements together nicely.

Please check out Adrienne’s channel on YouTube when it launches in April of this year ()! Or find her on Facebook () or Instagram ().

Need a business card or other print designs? A logo or branding package? See my other work and contact me at www.time2flydesigns.com

01/15/2026

An interesting "specialty" in graphic design is the creation of Infographics. We've all seen examples of them and they can truly be an art form. They help to distill complex data into attractive and easy to digest visuals. Here is an example I designed using data regarding "Smartphone Dependence". I originally thought this meant people who were addicted to their phone! But it is actually people who have a Smartphone, but do not have a high-speed broadband service at home, so they are dependent on their phone for internet access.

Could your business use some help with infographics? Need help visualizing sales figures for a report? Want to explain some complex data to customers or clients? Or make some graphs for a publication? View my portfolio and contact me at www.time2flydesigns.com

11/30/2025

11/30/2025

Part 3 of the Fresh Fare Farms multi-channel advertising... an animated web banner. If you would like to see more of my work or learn how we could work together to help your business, please visit my website at www.time2flydesigns.com

11/19/2025

Sharing a link to a post I just saw on LinkedIn. Good analogy and some things that many people don't realize about graphic design...

Graphic design looks deceptively simple because so many people have access to Canva now. It's like being a chef 👨🏼‍🍳. People see you stirring a pot on the stove or flipping a burger patty, but they don't realize you're actually juggling ten orders while memorizing dietary restrictions and...