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WILTGROEI

Shaping Systems for Human Empowerment

Visual Identity / Animation / Web

2024

Project info

Wiltgroei - meaning in Dutch 'Wild Growth' - isn’t your typical consultancy. They’re on a mission to flip systems, putting people over profit and dignity over growth. By shaking up boardrooms, town halls, and canteens, they’re driving change from the inside out—so systems work for everyone.

This brand is built for action. No fluff, no jargon—just a direct, energized approach to change. The visual identity brings Wiltgroei’s mission to life: making systemic change feel personal, urgent, and entirely possible. This is a brand that breaks the rules and challenges convention—just like the consultants behind it. Their website invites action: clear, focused, and ready to make a real impact.

The Wiltgroei logomark says it all—two leaves breaking free from the clean lines of a rounded square. Representing new possibilities, they push through the walls of outdated systems, demanding attention and growth. Clean, bold, and refreshingly organic. Studio NelNel was responsible for a complete rebrand; from strategic co-creation sessions to a brand guide and website.

Credits

Project Management: Floor van de Geijn
Brand Communication Lead: Nienke Geijer

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Turning Bureaucracies Into Human Systems

Making Systems Human

Change

Wiltgroei

Turning Bureaucracies
Into Human Systems

Wiltgroei, Dutch for “Wild Growth”, operates in the cracks of the system, pushing bureaucratic institutions to shift from within. Their work is rooted in a belief that human-centered practices can reorient how systems operate: toward dignity, trust and transparency. In boardrooms, councils and offices they bring systemic critique into spaces often too rigid or too risk-averse to hold it.

Besides their client projects, Wiltgroei is building a collective of professionals – a system in its own right – where they explore radical transparency, flatten hierarchies, and invest in ecological regeneration, including their own food forest.

The practices of Wiltgroei align with insights from institutional theory, which suggest that lasting change often emerges incrementally from within. Scholars like Mahoney and Thelen describe how shifts in norms and internal practices can slowly rewire power structures.

Yet while I see the importance of internal reform, I remain critical of the narrative that systemic change primarily comes from the inside. Too often, this perspective becomes a comfortable story that protects the status quo, allowing white hegemonic capitalist structures to claim they’re “changing” while continuing to extract, exclude, and consolidate power. Wiltgroei acknowledges this tension, and doesn’t claim neutrality. Their methods are confrontational in their softness, and alive in their contradictions.

There is still value in this kind of work. Wiltgroei makes space for people already inside systems to begin doing things differently. And that matters. While outside pressure may remain the more forceful driver of structural transformation, reform from within can create ripples. Opening up cracks, holding doors open, and nurturing wild new growth in places we might least expect it.