The Listening Tour
In order to rethink the most fundamental pieces of our identity, we first had to talk to the people who knew us best: our community. We embarked on a Listening Tour, gathering feedback from members, volunteers, donors, partners, activists, education participants, community scientists, Backyard Habitat participants, our sister Oregon Bird Alliance of Oregon chapters, frontline communities, young audiences, and people who visited our sanctuary.
Nearly 600 people participated in the Listening Tour, helping to set the foundation of what would become our new brand. We learned so much, including how our community values our conservation work, our commitment to science and collaboration, and our work to inspire all people to love and protect nature. We also heard the important message that this community cares deeply about the intersections between the environment and social justice, and that both need to be tended to in order to achieve our goals. And we learned that people value the strength of this community and being surrounded by others who care as deeply about the environment as they do.
Using the feedback, we set to work to look at all the aspects of our brand, starting with our logo and tagline.
Reimagining the Great Blue Heron
The Great Blue Heron has been the face of Bird Alliance of Oregon since the 1980s, soon after then Conservation Director Mike Houck convinced Mayor Bud Clark to make the species Portland’s official city bird. The Great Blue Heron delights both children and adults, avid birders and folks new to nature. It can be found from city parks to the most remote wildlife refuges in the state. We changed the design, updating it to incorporate habitat — after all, a bird needs a healthy environment to thrive — and kept the Great Blue Heron to represent our work.
Our new logo reflects our more commonly used name, Bird Alliance of Oregon — a shift that stems from feedback from Listening Tour groups who felt “society” sounded outdated and exclusive. We’ve been shortening our name to Bird Alliance of Oregon for years, and now that change is reflected on our logo and beyond.
Together for Nature
But the bird represents only a single piece of the puzzle. We needed one more element to have a complete logo: community. We reimagined our tagline to become something more inclusive and welcoming to all people. Something that represented everyone from activists fighting for old-growth forests to families exploring their local natural areas. “Together for Nature” encapsulated everything we wanted to say. Because it will take all of us to protect the wildlife and wild places we care about.
Website
Check out our new website, redesigned for a greatly improved user experience. We updated all our content, from birding resources to conservation issues to education programs. We increased accessibility — for example, we added a feature to instantly translate the website into more than 100 languages. Our new blog will allow us to tell more stories about conservation, natural history, environmental education, and the immense value of our partnerships.
Warbler
Last but not least, the new Warbler. The Warbler has been one of our most vital communication tools for more than 80 years. The Warbler is a conversation, and we wanted to ensure the changes we made would not just keep the conversation going but add more voices by appealing to more diverse audiences. To that end, we changed to a full-color magazine format that allows us to better tell our stories through words and visuals and remains cost conscious with the use of recycled bright newsprint paper. We hope you enjoy the new look and feel, now able to capture the full colors of the avian world.
We’d like to thank all of you who took the time to share your opinions so we could thoughtfully make changes, changes that both honor our long established community and reach beyond to folks we haven’t yet met. We are excited to move into the future with you, together for nature.
