Planted Detroit is a is a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) vertical farm, rooted on Detroit’s east side, that utilizes hydroponic technology to grow clean, pesticide-free leafy greens, herbs, microgreens, and a line of ready-to-eat salads with namesakes inspired by different neighborhoods within the city. This form of agriculture is still novel to the region, and utilizes technology to control the growing environment theoretically creating a closed, sustainable food system year-round. Planted’s entire space exists in a lab-like environment where workers scrub into the vertical farm and wear protective gear to cultivate produce that, all inputs accounted for, is comparably ‘better than organic’.

Now growing its team and operations, construction is almost complete on two large grow rooms at the 22,000-square-foot facility, which will allow Planted to increase productivity and welcome back wholesale customers while continuing to provide a sustainable, direct-to-consumer meal kit service.

Leading up to the company’s reveal of all of its plans for expansion, I was contracted to produce a range of media and brand touchpoints that would better position and express Planted Detroit’s offerings and values to stakeholders, internal team members and the greater Detroit community. I worked closely with Managing Partner Meg Burritt and Digital Media Specialist, Julie MacDonald to refresh and further develop Planted’s brand guidelines, and then created a system and suite of all various visual identity components that included deliverables from product illustrations, corporate one-pagers and presentation decks, social media assets, employee training passports and a redesign of all product packaging that reflected the brand’s intersections of agriculture, science and play.