Re-storying a community learning Network

EcoGather is a co-sensing and learning community. EcoGather offers courses and recurring gatherings to find like-spirited people who treat the exhausted earth with reverence and want to reclaim the human story. Find hope in each other, and explore the resources necessary to engage meaningfully in your place and community.

Project

Sympoiesis was commissioned to refresh the EcoGather brand, and increase the reach of their Instagram account as well as the number of participants in online gatherings through periodic social media communications.

The account followership grew by 120% in the first quarter, and average post engagement tripled. Visually, the feed has heightened coherence and a unique appeal.

Further, we developed visual identities for two new courses, distinct on their own yet coherent with the main visual identity.

Process

We kicked off our collaboration with a bespoke Communications Ecology Workshop. In this workshop, we explored the 7 domains of our Communications Ecology Canvas, including Essence, Potential, Audience, and Synergies. The workshop combined the external and internal — finding inspiration in others and articulating the inner essence and untapped organizational potential.

Sympoiesis then created a (re)branding proposal as well as a document outlining strategic aims, that continues to guide the communications design today. Beauty, nature-connection, the critique of dominant paradigms, and inspiring alternative ways of being, knowing, and doing continue to be the red thread that runs throughout EcoGather’s communications.

“In less than six months, Sympoiesis has refreshed EcoGather's branding, brought new life to our collaborations, elevated our social media content, and generated soulful visual identities for several of our programs. We have grown our reach and accessed a regular flow of new participants for our programs. More importantly, we have benefited from deep alignment in values and interests, swapping inspirations and enthusiasms, anxieties and aspirations. ”

— Nicole Civita, Network Weaver & Creative Collaboration Director

color palette

We expanded the existing, predominantly green color palette with a bice blue, a rust red, and a golden yellow to represent the 4 elements while achieving a 70s, natural look.

font pairing

We complemented the existing body font, Rubik, with a matching organic heading font, Tangelo, to further expand on the 70s vintage, organic look and feel.

Mockup representation featuring a selection of Instagram posts created for EcoGather’s account. For each monthly theme, we translated EcoGather’s essays into visual communication pieces with a distinct visual style.

“Sympoiesis offers the rare gift of attunement. Every time we begin a new phase of our collaboration, I sense each player picking up and calibrating their instruments, warming up, and improvising new harmonies. New melodies bend and bounce between us. Before long, ideas are singing, images are dancing, and our offerings are reverberating more widely and deeply than before.”

— Nicole Civita, Network Weaver & Creative Collaboration Director

Mockup representation of analog photographs by Sympoiesis’ Niels Devisscher, licensed to EcoGather and used in their social media communications.

“Niels and Rūta are tender visionaries who create with care and honor attention. They have helped EcoGather express its essence in ways that court complexity and evade confusion, befriend bewilderment and make room for magic, and even enliven imagination while keeping things as real as we need them to be.”

— Nicole Civita, Network Weaver & Creative Collaboration Director