Freedom is your Park
for Freedom Park Conservancy
Project Type: Branding, Signage, Product design
Role: Design and Marketing Team Member
Timeline: June 2025 - January 2026
Client: Freedom Park Conservancy
As part of a two-person design and marketing team at HBK Creative, I helped develop and pitch a brand campaign and create graphics, brand assets, signage, and merchandise for Freedom Park, a historic and iconic park spanning multiple neighborhoods in the heart of Atlanta. We met with members of the Freedom Park Conservancy board throughout the process to respond to budgeting and feedback.
Goals
Create more recognizable, standout brand material for the park.
As part of a larger investment in the park, clearly adorn the park with signage and way finding to mark its unorthodox shape and boundaries.
Encourage donations to the Freedom Park Conservancy, and provide donors with merchanmdise that displays their support.
Concept Development
In discovering and admiring the unique history and features of Freedom Park, our campaign concept came to life. The things that make the park so unique are why so many Atlanta community members cherish the park already. Thus, if we could raise awareness of its unique features, celebrate them, and make them a proud part of its branding, we hoped that more and more people would visit and support Freedom Park.
Research
Freedom park has a long and inspiring history charting its creation and lasting legacy. We had no doubt that immersing ourselves in its history was the place to start, and took the time to learn what the park means to the Atlanta community. We studied its legacy as a proposed site for a highway protested by community members. We reveled in its unique features, like connecting multiple neighborhoods and the centers for two different Nobel Peace Prize winners. We observed the park’s strong appeal to bikers and runners, and its ever-changing array of installation art.
Taglines
Based on our research and conversations with Freedom Park Conservancy board members, we narrowed the park’s unique features into four pillars. The park had an existing tagline: “Freedom is your park”. Using the pillars we had defined, we created four new variations of the tagline highlighting each one.
Freedom is your Nobel Peace park
Freedom is your Art park
Freedom is your Intown Greenway park
Freedom is our Legacy park
Visual Style
The park had a standing visual identity that was previously created as part of a lengthy master plan. However, it was seldom used outside of their website. It was quickly decided that we would continue to use the typefaces, logos, and colors outlined in the visual identity. Some of the most visually striking parts of the master plan document were its title slides. These slides featured the Freedom Park logo with a bold, flat, endless ripple effect alternating between two shades of a single color.
Tagline Graphics
We were inspired by these slides, so much so that they quickly became the blueprint for the visual direction of the new campaign. Each color range, we decided, could correlate with one of our new tagline variations. Rather than use the logo, each of the four graphics would feature imagery pertaining to its tagline. I stylized the imagery like a stencil to retain the bold, flat contrast of the document slides. I had to pay special attention to sizing and placement to ensure that the ripple sizes appeared consistent across the four graphics.
Park Banners
The working files we created for each tagline graphic easily adapted to the vertical format of the banners. We initially ran into difficulties with when adapting the “Nobel Peace” graphic, as its two intersecting sets of ripples needed to change as the images of King and Carter moved. We had to develop a new system of setting up the graphic files, so that the intersecting ripples could be easily changed for any possible future format.
Yard Signs
One of the gifts for donors who supported the Freedom Park Conservancy, we wanted the yard signs to match the variety of the banners found in the park. By offering donors the choice of their favorite design, or the part of Freedom Park that means most to them, we created an incentive that lets them proudly and personally show their love for the park.
Importantly, many of the communities that cherish Freedom Park are highly walkable and have significant foot traffic passing by houses and front yards. We knew that the yard signs would have a great opportunity to be seen and attract more donors who could quickly connect with the Freedom Park Conservancy via the sign QR codes.
Tote Bags
The tote bags are another donor incentive that also hold the important features of choice and personalization. Once again, donors could choose the tote that best reflected their love for Freedom Park. We prioritized the taglines alone for the tote bags, ensuring they could be read from a distance, and allowing the totes to use a single color against natural canvas, conveying a reverence for nature.
Impact
Our flag designs were put up throughout the Atlanta Beltline and Freedom Park, quickly building identity in areas that were lacking signage. The tote bags and yard signs we designed helped to attract new enthusiastic donors for the Freedom Park Conservancy. Our work is one of the first visible steps in the ongoing investment in Freedom Park.