Transforming Omaha Municipal Land Bank’s logo mark.
The Omaha Municipal Land Bank, a governmental non-profit in Omaha, Nebraska, works to revitalize neglected properties and promote urban growth. In collaboration with Klar, Inc., the organization developed a distinctive logo. This logo combines elements of Omaha’s urban landscape with Nebraska’s state tree, the Cottonwood, creating a compelling visual identity. It shows the Land Bank’s commitment to improving Omaha’s distressed properties and stands as a symbol of its transformative work.
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ABOUT OMAHA MUNICIPAL LANDBANK
OmahaLandBank.org
The Omaha Municipal Land Bank, located in Omaha, Nebraska, is a governmental, not-for-profit organization working to acquire vacant, abandoned, or derelict properties throughout Omaha to either renovate or demolish for future use or growth.
PRINT DESIGN
Our relationship began with a strategic summary document.
The Executive Director asked Klar, Inc. to design the Omaha Municipal Land Bank’s Strategic Summary document layout. The team would share the document with potential donors and individuals interested in more details about the Land Bank in Omaha. While formatting the Strategic Summary, discussions turned to create a mark for the document’s cover, a symbol unique to the organization and Omaha.
LOGO DESIGN
A unique mark anchored to the Omaha Municipal Land Bank’s city.
We discovered a trend in other national land banks during our initial research for the Omaha Municipal Land Bank. Multiple Land Bank logos would typically consist of designs representing a field, farmland, small plant, and a house. With Omaha being the largest city in Nebraska, farmland and fields were not part of the landscape in which the Omaha Land Bank would be serving. Their offices in the downtown district, the immediate need to transform Omaha’s distressed properties into positive community assets was in the north district.
The logo consists of a symbol and a wordmark. The emblem created for the Omaha Land Bank utilizes three elements. The Omaha skyline has two recognizable high rises, the Woodman Tower and the First National Bank Tower; an outline of the two towers forms the first of three elements. The second element created for the mark was the different size houses representing the multiple neighborhoods throughout the city. The final component of the three was the tree, designed from the leaf of the Cottonwood, which is the Nebraska State tree.
We chose a geometric typeface redesigned in 2012 that consists of multiple font weights when creating the wordmark. The font’s options allowed us to create a foundation for the symbol to sit. Locating the wordmark under the emblem signifies the strength the Omaha Municipal Land Bank would make to the city of Omaha’s distressed properties.
Together, the symbol and wordmark form the logo for the Omaha Municipal Land Bank.
Once officially established and funded, the Land Bank partnered with another local firm for their communication efforts. The agency altered the brand colors; however, the initial logo created for the Strategic Summary document remained and is still in use today.
COLOR PALETTE
A clean color palette of earth and sky.
We used a simple, clean color palette for the Strategic Summary document and logo consisting of four colors. The logo used the two primary colors of green and blue, while the document added a shade of each color.