NW Natural:
Less We Can Campaign

Impact

Led art direction for the “Less We Can” campaign, helping reposition NW Natural’s environmental narrative around decarbonization and customer energy efficiency.

Role & Responsibilities

Art Director: Art Direction, Campaign Branding, Digital Experience, Motion Direction, Production Collaboration

Brief

NW Natural needed to introduce and shape a new sustainability initiative focused on reducing energy use and carbon impact. At the outset, the program lacked a defined name, narrative, and visual direction, making it difficult to communicate clearly or engage customers around long-term behavior change.

Solution

I led the art direction and visual strategy to help establish Less We Can as a clear, optimistic campaign platform, creating a cohesive identity and flexible design system that aligned with NW Natural’s brand while making complex sustainability goals approachable and actionable for customers.

Pacific Northwest landscapes, approachable illustration, and explainer-style storytelling shaped a campaign designed to bring complex ideas to the masses.

Inspiration

Initial concepts

The final Less We Can wordmark brings together the NW Natural logo, a custom type treatment, and the trademark symbol into a unified mark. The lettering carries a hand-drawn quality that ties directly to the campaign’s visual language, reinforcing its approachable, human tone while remaining clearly connected to the parent brand.

Final brand

Minimum Size:
Minimum width of 100px for digital application and 1.5 inches for print.

The “Less We Can” wordmark is available in a set of bright, high-impact color variations that bring energy and flexibility to the campaign. These alternate versions are designed for use across social media, merchandise, and other promotional applications.

Color Palette & Typography

Campaign Development

Concepting & Story Development
The Less We Can campaign began with a series of explainer videos focused on showing how both NW Natural and its customers could realistically reduce natural gas use and save money. We used storyboards to explore tone, pacing, and visual metaphors, allowing the team to test ideas early and shape a narrative that felt practical, optimistic, and easy to understand before production began.

From Storyboard…

…To Video

Production & Filming
To ground the illustrated storytelling in real context, we traveled across the valley and along the coast capturing footage from communities throughout NW Natural’s service territory. This footage was then integrated into the illustrative explainer videos, connecting the message to recognizable places and making the campaign feel local, relevant, and rooted in everyday life.

Application

The Less We Can branding was pressure-tested across the entire campaign ecosystem—from commercial spots to promotional collateral and marketing materials. Applying the identity across multiple formats ensured the visual language remained cohesive while supporting the campaign’s broader rollout.

Brand guidelines

I led the development of the Less We Can brand guidelines, establishing a clear visual system that governed wordmark usage, typography, color, and illustration across the campaign ecosystem. The guidelines enabled internal teams and external partners to apply the identity consistently across commercials, promotional collateral, and campaign communications.

Web Experience

As the sole web designer on the team, I led the creation of the Less We Can web experience from structure through final visuals. I partnered with the NW Natural team to develop wireframes and shape the user journey, then interviewed and selected the development firm to bring the site to life. I designed the full UI, illustrated the iconography and micro-details, and curated photography to ensure the experience felt cohesive, clear, and aligned with the campaign’s tone.