Branding for the National Rivers and Streams Assessment

As part of a push to increase access to its survey reports and data, EPA’s Office of Water wanted to create an identifiable brand for its National Aquatic Resource Surveys program. For the National Rivers and Streams Assessment report, finalized in 2020, we built on the wave design we created for EPA’s National Lakes Assessment, using similar colors but incorporating a curve motif to symbolize meandering streams. The graph format also paralleled our graph design for the lakes report, making it instantly recognizable as a National Aquatic Resource Survey product. We also developed several explanatory graphics for the report to describe field sampling, graph interpretation, and EPA’s process for categorizing survey results.