Designing Local

Designing Local is a certified woman-owned business that helps communities create beautiful, functional places that engage and inspire. Founded in 2014, Designing Local was born of the belief that design, art, culture, history, and narrative are too often overlooked in the planning process. We are now nationally recognized for successfully weaving these elements into dozens of plans and designs. Our process is simple: we listen. Through creative public engagement, we help to extract the story of a place, then take that story — as told by the community itself — and translate it into the built environment. What we’ve found through this work is that authentic places attract people, and prosperity soon follows. For communities that choose to invest in public art, arts + culture, historic preservation, urban planning + design, landscape architecture, and public engagement, the payoff is substantial.