Fresh From The Field — Good Folks - By Cultigraphy

Fresh from the field

Fresh From The Field — Good Folks – By Cultigraphy

For the month of April we’ve put a special focus on projects and discussions around Design & Planet in alignment with our 2024 Autumn Conversations events.

Fresh from the Field is a weekly article series sharing the fresh and inspiring work of our Aotearoa Design Assembly community.

Cultigraphy walk us their work for Good Folks and how through ‘gentle activism’ woven into freelancer design education, we can close the gap between environmental action and the traditional position of the design industry.

Want to submit your own work to Fresh From The Field? Fill out the FFTF form here.

The Brief

Good Folks was born out of the fundamental question driving our work: what can graphic designers do in the climate crisis? As a digital and visual industry traditionally divorced from the natural environment, in both the freelancer and agency realms—and as an industry often neutral in social justice issues—it was initially difficult to discern how design could make an independent contribution to the climate action movement, beyond working for and being paid by clients which happen to be sustainable. Over two years, we have been immersed in the climate action and non-profit space of Tāmaki Makaurau, and discovered two widespread issues: lack of funding, and lack of effective communication to engage the general population. As a young, bootstrapped studio, we’ve experimented with a number of small ways to help the climate activism movement, including non-profit discounts, sponsorships, and events. We eventually realised that in order to target the two major issues, we would need to engage people outside the relatively small niche of professionals already involved in climate mahi; to engage Generation Z a whole. Good Folks is one of our answers to this challenge.

The Design Response

The Good Folks brand speaks to Generation Z. Starting off from scratch as a humble Instagram account, we hope that through ‘gentle activism’ woven into freelancer design education, we can close the gap between environmental action and the traditional position of the design industry. Our long-term goals are to nurture successful, purpose-driven design businesses, build a prominent platform of awareness for the work of impact creatives, and generate income for a climate grants fund. Since this is expected to take several years, the design responds to increasing climate anxiety due to doomerism and a constant awareness of international tragedies due to social media, which has resulted in a strong movement of youth tastes towards comforting and escapist content. While this attitude concerningly manifests as hyper-consumerism, the Good Folks brand aims to evoke the laidback positivity of summers spent camping in woodlands and swimming in the ocean. It was important that the brand would be unpretentious and community-based, yet have potential for cool ‘cult brand’ status in the future, and so the name ‘Good Folks’ acts as a gender-neutral and hopeful name for the audience: bringing together a diversity of creatives and interests, whether already climate-conscious or not, under the collective umbrella of good folks. The visual identity draws from 90s indie films, underlined by a colour palette grounded in forests, surf, and sunrises. The sun mascot is a playful little addition to bring humour to the brand.