Designing the California Delta Plan

Delta Plan - Main Chapter Design
Each chapter of the massive Plan document has been designed with a clear overview.
Client:   Delta Stewardship Council/CH2M Hill

California's Delta is the ecological heart of the state, the mixing bowl for the state's two major rivers. It's also the hub of intense political controversy about conservation and water use. To resolve these two themes, California established the Delta Stewardship Council in 2010, to prepare a detailed plan for Delta management. The Council, through its contractor, CH2M Hill, asked GreenInfo to assist with the graphic design of the plan and its component maps and graphics.

GreenInfo staff began the project with a thorough review of existing graphics and reports about the Delta and engaged the Delta Council's staff in defining maps, charts and graphics likely to be needed to support the content of each chapter in the plan.  GreenInfo brought in its frequent design partner, Ison Design, to assist with developing a basic template for all plan graphics. We also built an internal  Council website for review and comment on draft graphics.

Over the following two years, the Council and its main consultant, CH2M Hill, moved through many plan drafts. The topics in the plan are complex and very controversial, so great care was taken to effectively address key issues.  The final draft plan, released in mid-2013, is several hundred pages in length. 

GreenInfo and Ison Design worked closely with Council staff and consultants to design an overall system of graphics (tables, charts/graphs, illustrations and timelines) for the plan document.  We helped them define key messages in plan chapters, identify concepts for visuals (figures, tables, charts) and then prototyped visualizations to be used for final art. Many graphics were done entirely by GreenInfo and Ison.

Finally, we advocated for a particular report design to frame all of the plan's content, building templates for the way text and graphics would interact, as well as the cover and chapter cover page designs.

All of this work was done in conjunction with our mapping for the Plan   Learn more about this project ยป

This project has been a great example of how GreenInfo can span a wide range of roles - working with complex data, defining messages and communication concepts, designing creative illustrations and doing all this within a project management framework that keeps many parties focused on results.   

Results: The final Delta Plan was published in late 2013 and is now being used in implementation.

Focus:   Conservation, Environment, Government Agencies  

Services:  Communications, Graphic Design, Strategy, Publications 

Tags:   California, Delta, Delta Council, Esri ArcGIS, graphics  

“ Through the lengthy process of completing the Delta Plan we were pleased to work with the GreenInfo team. They were very professional, creative, flexible and efficient in their tasks and produced a series of high-quality graphics, maps, tables and charts for the final Delta Plan. They provided keen insight and valuable advice on the formatting and design for the plan, and we're continuing to work with them on followup tasks. ”

—  Cindy Messer, Deputy Executive Officer-Delta Plan, Delta Stewardship Council

Project Years: 2012, 2013

GreenInfo Network creates, analyzes, visualizes and communicates information in the public interest. We specialize in mapping and related technology for nonprofits and public agencies, focusing on using it for conservation, social equity, public health, environment and foundation grant making.
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