City of Charlotte
Visual Identity Case Study
Evolving a legacy civic identity into a more flexible, accessible system for a growing city.
Context
My work with Charlotte’s visual identity has spanned multiple stages of its evolution. I collaborated with the creative team on the City’s first comprehensive visual style guide, published in 2019, and continued to maintain and expand the system as the City’s communication needs grew.
Over time, my role shifted from maintaining the identity to helping shape its broader direction—building on that foundation to explore a more comprehensive civic identity system designed for greater clarity, flexibility and consistency across a complex organization.
2019-2024
Visual Style Guide- Collaborative development
Annual Iterations- Maintenance + expansion
Problem
The existing visual identity established a strong foundation for consistency, but the City’s needs had outgrown a traditional style guide. Dozens of departments, programs, initiatives and communication channels introduced new questions around brand architecture, accessibility, governance and how residents identify official City communications.
Proposed Evolution
Selected excerpts from the proposed brand system illustrate the research, architecture and design development behind its evolution.
Building on research into municipal identity systems, Charlotte’s visual history and how the City brand functions in practice, the proposed evolution preserves existing brand equity while expanding the identity into a more comprehensive civic system.
Goals
Establish a clearer architecture for how the City identity extends across departments, programs, initiatives, partnerships and specialized communication needs.
Evolve the color system to prioritize accessible contrast while providing greater flexibility across digital, print and environmental applications.
Proposed Evolution In Action
The system was tested across real-world applications to understand how the identity could flex across different formats, audiences and communication needs while remaining recognizably City of Charlotte.
Selected concepts shown represent an evolving system that has been tested and partially implemented as development continues.
