The Ruth Mott Foundation carries the legacy of Ruth Rawlings Mott, and its work is inseparable from Applewood - the 65-acre historic estate in Flint, Michigan, once home to automotive pioneer Charles Stewart Mott, that the Foundation now stewards as a working urban farm and community space. The existing brand and website hadn't kept pace with the Foundation's expanding community programs, but a full rebrand carried real risk: get it wrong, and you erode decades of trust built into that Mott name and mark.
The brief was narrow and specific - refresh, don't replace. The historic logo had to survive the process intact, and the new site had to be simple enough for foundation staff, not developers, to keep updated.
We ran logo sprints to explore how far the mark could flex without losing what made it recognizable, then handed the strongest direction to an art director for the UX/UI pass. On the development side, we built modular WordPress templates with security best practices baked in from the start, so the team could add new programs and stories without touching code or risking the site's integrity. The whole rebrand - logo validation through launch-ready templates - moved in three weeks.
The Foundation's Imagine Flint Master Plan process, which shaped much of their strategic direction, had already engaged more than 5,000 Flint residents - a reminder that this brand had to speak to an unusually broad, unusually invested audience.
The refreshed identity kept the historic mark intact while giving the Foundation a modern, modular site its own staff can maintain without a developer on call. Working with a well-established foundation reinforced a lesson that applies well beyond nonprofits: the more established the trust, the more a rebrand has to earn its place rather than announce itself.