Woods of Plenty is an integrative design firm that documents native ecotypes as models for productive landscapes. I built graphics for clients and the web that depicted planting arrangements for interactive spaces. The homestead model below gives woodland owners a path towards a self-sustaining landscape that provides food and enjoyment all year long. Our goal at Woods of Plenty was to deliver a deeper connection with the land through visceral experience.
- There are 11,505,000 acres of privately owned non-industrial forest land in Pennsylvania.
The woodlands are a system that is influenced by climate, land-formation, watershed, and solar aspect. This illustration takes into account the needs of humans that live in and interact with the woodland system as well as the opportunities afforded by the land. I approach these interactions at human scale, taking into account creature comforts, body size and personal preferences.
Our small firm designed interactions which seamlessly led to moments within the landscape to be visited time and time again.
My Role: Lead UX/UI Designer - Graphics Designer
Teammates: Jeff Lackey and Steve Suffian
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Figma, Google maps/docs, IDE text editor, Git
Teammates: Jeff Lackey and Steve Suffian
Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Figma, Google maps/docs, IDE text editor, Git
Persona
Our team set out to learn more about our customer to formulate our services to their needs. Early on we connected with forest landowners associations and service foresters by phone. We were interested in the goals of woodland land owners, both in the long term and short term, as well as the extent of the invasive plant problem. Along the way we found that most woodland land owners would like to improve habitat for wildlife, are under utilizing their forest for recreation, and whether or not they planned to harvest their timber, most were wary of doing so without forethought.
Storyboard
A story about the intrinsic value of the forest to help guide our vision for new customers
A story about the intrinsic value of the forest to help guide our vision for new customers
1. Steve comes home from work early while the sun is still shining on a hot July day. He wants to take advantage of the beautiful weather and thinks, "Where better to go than the shady forest?". 2. Steve changes his clothing and hits the trail, knowing well that he can wear shorts because there is a path created by his daily use.
Steve walks a short distance before noticing some interesting three leafed plants in an attractive pattern, he enjoys their soft green hue.
4&5. Walking a bit further Steve sees a spider weaving a web so he stops and kneels down to view the spider at work. The sun glints off of the web.
6,7&8. The forest sure is teeming with life this time of year. Steve looks up to see beautiful black cherry trees and the blue sky above them. 9&10. Further down the path in a sunny spot Steve picks ripe and sweet blackberries
11.Eventually Steve arrives at his favorite spot a wooden footbridge, with a creek trickling underneath. He stops to enjoy the scenery. 12. Time in the woods puts a big smile on his face.
Info-graphics
The team at Woods of Plenty has a straight forward workflow. First we take an inventory of the existing flora and fauna, including invasive species, then we move the biomass generated by the manual removal of invasive plants and redirect it to serve a new function; protecting and fertilizing native plants. During the dynamic design phase, we look for opportunities to slow down erosion and carve out spaces for humans to enjoy the forest. Native species are brought into the space to deliver even more beauty and food production.
Giving perspective clients the ability to understand the services provided by our innovative ecological design team was of the utmost importance. We started with this common design element; process badges. This set-up the story we would tell in the subsequent pages of the website.
The forest has many layers and each layer is comprised of a specific set of species. This illustration depicts the forest layers and the species that make up those layers. Visualizing all the species in one place allows us to better describe how we might integrate new species into our clients existing forest to maximize production by mimicking nature's design.
Big goals: create farm-scale implementation for commercial applications. Our designs can produce a very profitable system with perennial plants that support and are protected by the presence of livestock.
Design for a client: this new planting was integrated within a recently thinned forest. From a parking area we would build a mile long hiking trail that connected our client with brand new fruit tree plantings and their land.
Web Design
The flow was simple but it told a story of how we made progress in the forest one plant at a time - The website served a greater purpose; to be an interactive teaching and marketing tool. The design and content was specifically tailored to meet the needs of our customers.
screen-flow:
screenshots of live site:
Final Thoughts
People were very excited to learn more about their forest, our digital and print material resonated with people who we encountered at conferences and we routinely received messages from people who found us organically on the web. In the end, long term management was at too high of a cost for most people to consider continuous management projects.
People were interested in ways to "monetize" their forest without cutting it down—there are profits to be made with medicinal plants like American ginseng or Goldenseal. The cultivation of mushrooms could have also been a viable woodland business. We formulated a system to test sites for viability of growing sensitive medicinal plants, but never implemented it. Businesses must change their view of the customer landscape as they learn more about what their customer wants.
Our message that invasive species could be managed in a way that didn't rely on pesticides was one that the public wanted, but not all were ready to hear. Although, our business was profitable we could have position ourselves for projects that benefited from government grants, as private land owners may have limited fund for land management.
You can't fight nature you must work with it.
You can't fight nature you must work with it.
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