It’s a great day for being a part of the Sow True Seed community - thank you for being here and thank you for being a loyal customer. Whether you’ve known us for a couple of years or since our inception, every growing season means the world to us. You’ve seen us go through a lot! The pandemic, the retirement of our beloved founder, Carol, our subsequent transition to employee-ownership, hurricanes, and everything in between. Every one of these experiences has shaped what Sow True Seed is. And as we grow, so does our story. Today, we’re excited to reveal the next chapter.
Meet the new and improved Sow True Seed! We’re delighted to be introducing a brand refresh that represents all of the changes we’ve been through and everything we hope to be. While our logo, colors, packets, and website all look a little different, we’re still the same employee-owned seed company you know and love.
Icon Breakdown
Part of our new logo is a new icon. Our sunflower, while iconic, had an intricate design and bright colors that didn’t achieve what we truly wanted it to. Our new icon is perceived a little differently by everyone who comes across it. When our team first saw it - we noted the seedling right away. But the circle above it - is it a sun or a moon? And could this seedling be tucked away in the mountains like we are? We appreciated the subjectivity of the icon - there’s room for everyone's own experience and unique point of view. On a more practical note, the symmetry and geometric style of the icon holds its own on our products, while not taking away from the art it’s so often displayed next to.
Seed Packets That Let the Art - and Info - Shine
You’ve loved our art packets from the beginning, and it’s been an honor to steward the work of talented artists all over the country for all these years. However, we’ve always felt that our packet design didn’t let the art truly shine on its own. The forest green could sometimes clash with the art, our logo took up just a little too much space, and the available space wasn’t optimized for variety and growing information.
Alongside the design and branding team at Atlas Branding, we embarked on a creative process to find the best packet design that accurately represented our brand, our values, and the needs of gardeners. First and foremost, we wanted to find a way for the art to truly shine. And we wanted to figure out the way to best utilize the space so that all of the growing information you might need is right there on the packet - no more double checking the website. We also wanted to create an eye-catching item. Something that told a story on its own. A seed packet you could look at and grasp the story and the history that already exists inside the seed. We think Atlas did just that.
In addition, we also reworked our packets that don’t (yet) have artwork. Internally, we refer to these as our “generic” packets - because we print them in-house. Our generic packets have never quite used their available space efficiently. There was very little consistency in what information was featured on the packet and what information was left off. With our new design, we made sure consistency was front and center. If you expect to find certain information on one packet, you’ll find it on the others too.
A Website Built for Growers of Every Skill Level
One of our main priorities for our new website was to have all of our educational resources front and center. We wanted gardeners of all experience levels to be able to find the products and the answers they need to grow a successful garden. While we’ve always had an abundance of free resources available, they weren’t always the easiest to find. Our content-rich blog has been hiding at the footer of our website for years. On a product page, if you’re looking for more information, you usually have to scroll down to find it. And when it came to finding related products - like companion plants or soil amendments to support a specific seed - that information was there, but often hidden unless you knew exactly where to look.
These issues have been fixed on our new website! Our garden blog is featured right there at the top of the website. We even have rotating, seasonally relevant blog posts featured right on the homepage if you’re not sure where to start. You’ll even find blog posts specific or helpful to certain products featured on the product pages. Our free educational resources are more accessible than ever.
On our product pages, that planting, growing, and seed saving information is all included right there at the top - no need to go hunting down the page for it. If you do decide to scroll, you’ll find some related products including companion plants, helpful tools, amendments, or other materials! Everything you need to grow a seed is right at your fingertips.
The question we get asked most often is "How do I grow ____ in my growing zone?” And that’s an excellent question! That’s why we wrote our Garden by Growing Zone blogs, which have been some of the most visited pages on our website for years. And now they have their own special home - right on our homepage.
Behind The Scenes
When we started the brand refresh process with Atlas Branding, what we were looking for was a style that represented our brand, and would be easily recognizable and stand out among the crowd of other seed companies. Something that was crisp and fresh but still represented everything we’ve been for the last 16 years. More than anything, we wanted our brand to simply be the vessel for the seeds and their stories, the art, and the educational resources we’ve always offered.
We were inspired by modern, clean designs with a focus on the contents of the package, rather than the packaging itself. We took cues from small-batch food culture one might come across in a local market or at your neighborhood farm stand - where goods are made with care and every packet reflects a deeper connection to land, labor, and lineage. We aspired for our editorial style to be timeless, combining classic publishing aesthetics with functional folk art - think old-school deli menus meet vintage seed catalogs. By combining all of these elements, we wanted Sow True Seed to reflect the care, craft, and integrity of not only what we do, but what our customers do with our products.
Of everything we needed to do, the seed packet redesign came first. This was the most time sensitive part of the project since we have to order our seed packets for the following year in the spring. Many, many meetings were had to nail down the details of the packet design. We learned about Indesign and commercial printing processes. We went through and did a full audit of the description, growing information, and details found on each individual seed packet (there are 592 by the way.) We made sure all the art was just right and we sent it off to our printer, coming down to the wire on our deadline. When our packets finally arrived in late June, we were stunned at how beautiful they were. We knew they’d be good - we just didn’t know they’d be that good! It was such a hard secret to keep because we just wanted to show you what we had all been working so hard on for the last year!
As our launch day got closer and closer, we began to consider how we’d like to introduce the new Sow True Seed to everyone. We worried about how to best communicate that, while we may look a little different, we are still the same company with the same values, business practices, and employee-owners. We decided to call on a long time collaborator, artist Kelley Wills of Brain Flower Designs. We thought rolling out this refresh alongside a beautiful piece of art could really help communicate our vision. Kelley has made several designs for us including our “Sow, Grow, Save” tote bag and our Sow True Seed hoodie. Who better to work with in introducing our refreshed look to the world? Kelley hit the nail on the head with this beautiful design. Her work communicates exactly what we’d hoped for - Sow True Seed is simply the vehicle to an abundant and beautiful garden. We are stewards of seeds and stories that can most certainly stand on their own. Perhaps your garden started with one of our packets of seeds, but it was you, the grower, and your labor, care, and consideration that created the flourishing and lush garden that exists today.
Voices From the Team
Our team here has played a vital role in what this refresh turned out to be, which in part is the beauty of being employee-owned. Our employees were able to collaborate to imagine a brand that really represents who we are, what we’ve been, and what we hope to be. Not only that but we learned a lot along the way. Nora Millar, our Fulfillment Manager, reflects on the process, “I’ve learned that the brand refresh process can be messy and variable but it fostered collaboration that led to improvements both structurally as a company and in the refresh itself.” Chloe Grund, our Wholesale Manager and Creative Director, conveys how the biggest challenge has been to trust the process and hope that our incredible customer base feels as connected to the refresh as we do. In the same breath, she reflects, “It’s a long overdue opportunity to really let who we are as an employee-owned, community-driven company shine. It helps to better reflect our identity, values, company culture, and to center education and creativity with a more modern and timeless feel.” Brooke Lovingood, our Director of Agriculture, agrees, “This brand refresh is a great representation of the transition to employee-ownership at Sow True Seed back in 2022, and our commitment to keeping gardening accessible for everyone.”
Top New Resources to Check Out
We encourage you to poke around on our new site and familiarize yourself - planning for next season is just around the corner after all. But here are a couple of things about our website that we’re most excited about.
Still the Sow True Seed You Know And Love
So, what do you think? While the look is different, absolutely nothing about the way we run our business has changed. We still offer the highest quality open-pollinated, heirloom, and organic seed varieties. We still operate with the utmost integrity and thoughtfulness - sourcing as locally as possible, paying our employees a living wage (Just Economics WNC), providing health benefits, and working to make our community better, more resilient, and more connected. We value the seeds we steward, we honor their histories and stories from near and far. Stories filled to the brim with human resilience, ancestral knowledge, perhaps a little bit of mystery, and of course, good and delicious food. We will never stop working with you to ensure that you have the most success in your garden - answering your questions from, “What is this bug on my squash?” to “Who’s eating my tomatoes?” (it was her dog, by the way). Send us your photos of your accomplishments and your catastrophes. Keep experimenting, keep learning, and keep coming together over this incredible instinct - to grow food for your community.
We’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts on the new website. Find something that doesn’t work quite right? Let us know! Is something not where it’s supposed to be? Shoot us an email. We’re so excited to finally be able to share this with you and cannot wait to hear what you think. In the meantime, poke around on our website, check out our new merch, browse our blog and maybe pick up a new tip or trick. Thanks for being here, and we’ll see you in the garden!
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Article Written by: Hannah Gibbons |
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About the Author: Hannah Gibbons, an employee and owner at Sow True Seed since 2020, has a decade of experience in the agricultural industry. Their passion for environmental education and regenerative agriculture has been the cornerstone of their work, aimed at making gardening accessible to all. |