The Green Dot: Branding A Brighter Future

The best brand marks tell a story, but what if it’s telling the wrong story?

That’s exactly what’s unfolded with The Green Dot program since its symbol was first unveiled in 1990. You’ve probably seen it before. It appears on more than 400 billion pieces of packaging worldwide every year, but not everyone knows what it means and, in some ways, it’s doing more harm than good.

The Green Dot (right) doesn’t mean an item is recyclable, but it’s often confused with the chasing arrows.

The Green Dot is a symbol that recognizes companies for making a financial contribution to responsible waste collection in Europe and around the world. The problem is it’s often confused with the iconic chasing arrows of the recycling symbol and can lead well-intentioned consumers to recycle packaging that can’t actually be recycled, leading to vast amounts of waste contamination worldwide.

Sustainability is an issue that’s close to our hearts at EightySeven. Before joining the team, I spent several years leading the creative team for a client that was immersed in the world of organic and sustainable agriculture. It’s a fascinating topic and working on brands that are striving to make a difference in the world is a core value of our branding studio. So, when we received the invitation from Two Creative and The Brand Design to reimagine The Green Dot in a way that could clarify its purpose and improve waste collection, we jumped at the opportunity.

Finding the right story to tell.

We redesigned the Green Dot to tell a more accurate story.

There were only two mandatories for the assignment — we couldn’t use arrows and we couldn’t design anything that implied recycling. But we wanted to give ourselves another creative mandatory, something we consider essential for all of the brand marks we design.

We wanted our updated Green Dot to tell a story. Since it’s used to recognize companies for their financial contributions to responsible waste collection, we saw the concept of collaboration as the obvious strategic direction for us to build on.

It applies both to the collective efforts of the participating companies AND the efforts of consumers in choosing to purchase products from companies that are making an effort to save our planet. After all, waste collection is not a problem that any one person can solve on their own.

“Great brand marks tell a story. The problem with the Green Dot was that it was telling the wrong one. We wanted to design a symbol that conveyed the idea of collaboration and could be used to recognize the companies that made a contribution to responsible waste collection”

Figuring out how to tell it.

We wanted the symbol to represent collaboration.

We wanted our updated symbol to be able to live with the existing “Green Dot” name, so a circular design was a must.

We also wanted the mark to be versatile enough that its elements could be leveraged to expand on the story it was telling in a uniquely ownable way.

The updated Green Dot we designed delivers on all three.

Every element of the new brand mark has meaning.

It features seven deltas, Greek symbols for change, that point inward to form a circle. Each delta represents one of the seven continents to represent the idea of global collaboration, but they also represent the seven days of the week for the round-the-clock effort it will require to tackle our growing waste problem.

At EightySeven, we believe in infusing elements of delight and creative business solutions into our brand designs. The negative space created by the deltas in our Green Dot also plays a role by forming a star that can be leveraged as a badge of recognition for companies participating in the program.

Our Green Dot was also designed to be highly dynamic in the digital space, and we wanted to be able to break it down to illustrate key points and leverage it as an ownable design element in cross-channel storytelling.

The ways it can be manipulated to tell our story in the digital space are abundant. Whether it appears in its entirety or broken apart into individual deltas, the dot can be used to highlight key information points, statistics, and calls-to-action.

The new Green Dot can be leveraged as a brand mark or a design element.

It can expand or retract to form line graphs and pie charts, or rotate to convey progress, momentum, and the passing of time.

The deltas can invert and move outward to convey the idea of action. They can even be rearranged to illustrate trees, water, mountains, even a mountain of waste.

Keeping the message simple.

Though it wasn’t part of the design brief, we also considered a messaging approach that could be used to introduce our new symbol to the world and opted for a simple copy construct that helped us add clarity to the meaning behind it. As the problem we were solving was rooted in confusion over the significance of the original Green Dot, we didn’t want to leave any room for confusion.

Sometimes a straightforward messaging approach works best.

Across channels, our headlines would always follow or be set over The Green Dot and speak to its significance.

“This Means Collaboration.”

“This Means Progress.”

“This Means A Brighter Future.”

“This Means Responsible Waste Collection.”

“This Means Companies Are Putting Their Money Where Our Earth Is.”

When you’re working with a relatively complex symbol, sometimes taking a simple messaging approach can balance everything out. And as we already know, repetition is a great tool for enhancing recall and memorability.

It’s all about the story.

Whether you’re building a brand from scratch or reimagining one for the next chapter, storytelling is the beating heart of the best modern brands. Stories are hardwired into human DNA. They’ve been helping us process and remember critical information since the beginning of time, and they can be used to give brands a meaningful purpose and role in people’s lives.

That’s why storytelling was so central to our Green Dot rebrand.

1. We figured out a new story for the brand to tell, one centered on the idea of collaboration that positioned the brand as a solution to a problem.
2. We designed a familiar, but novel brandmark that could help us tell that story.
3. We paired it with a simple, straightforward messaging strategy that could help cement our story in people’s memories.

With all of those elements in place, working in harmony like the seven deltas, the new Green Dot is in a great position to write a happier ending for everyone as it moves into the future.

If you’re interested in learning more or would like to enlist EightySeven’s help in bringing your brand’s story to life, give us a shout at hello@madeby87.com