Design | Report | Illustration | Charity | Nature
Trees for Cities 5-Year Strategic Plan Report & Leaflet
Trees for Cities came to me with an ambitious five-year strategy, a logo, a colour palette, and a fantastic photo library. They needed a high-impact document to help make their plan a success.
We started with an in-depth discovery session to map out audiences, practical uses, and clear goals. This alignment phase showed us that a digital-first strategy, paired with a physical supporting leaflet, was the smartest route. I page-planned their raw Word manuscript to establish pace and flow, creating clear visual sections that gave their photography room to breathe.
For the visual style, we focused on the cover first. We wanted to see how we could take their brand ingredients and build something that felt like a campaign, a movement people could coalesce around. The final art direction grew naturally from their existing logo. I created a set of simple human figures, trees, and urban landscapes that run consistently across every page to build that shared sense of purpose.
Because an online document needs to work for everyone, I built the final digital strategy as a fully accessible PDF. This meant going beyond basic layout to structure the document properly for screen readers, ensuring logical reading orders, correct tagging, and strong colour contrast. The result is a truly useful, inclusive online document that meets accessibility standards without compromising on the design.
The accompanying printed leaflet became the home for their Theory of Change diagram. To untangle this complex web of causes, actions, and outcomes, I ran multiple layout iterations to ensure the final graphic was both informative and easy to navigate. This was produced as a fold-out leaflet containing the executive summary, styled to match the main strategy.
When the team later decided they would like a physical edition of the full strategy, I reformatted the design to function beautifully as a landscape printed document.
