Giving Fen Peas a brand as fresh as their harvest
How Cursor evolved the Fen Peas logo and rebuilt their website to tell a richer story about British-grown peas
The client
Fen Peas began in 1968, when four Boston-area farmers joined forces to form a growers' cooperative. Today it farms over 5,000 acres of the Lincolnshire Fens with 82 growers. Fen Peas' produce is supplied primarily to Greenyard Frozen Foods UK and Princes, reaching British retail and food service under well-known own-label brands.
The business was built on sustainable, home-grown peas, farmed by a close-knit group of Lincolnshire growers who've been at it for close to 60 years. It’s a great story; the trouble was, the Fen Peas brand and website weren't telling it.
The opportunity
Neither the existing Fen Peas logo or website had moved with the business. The logo was dated, the site's dark colour palette felt heavy rather than fresh, and the last blog post had been published back in 2019, despite plenty of new developments at Fen Peas since.
The site was also focused on products rather than the story behind them, and pitched at industry buyers rather than the general public. Fen Peas wanted the focus to shift: consumers first, showcasing peas as a seasonal, sustainable, home-grown food worth valuing properly, with the whole site written to be informative and fun for anyone with a bit of curiosity about where their peas come from.
Alongside the website, the logo itself needed an update. Fen Peas wanted an evolution rather than a full redesign, and had one particular idea they were keen to bring in: the official pea emoji. Fen Peas' Managing Director, Stephen Francis, was a named spokesperson for the "Yes Peas!" campaign, launched in July 2019 to coincide with Great British Pea Week. The campaign, run on behalf of the British Growers Association, lobbied the Unicode Consortium for a "pea-moji", complete with a human pea-pod costume touring the streets of London for publicity. The pea emoji was officially approved in 2022, giving Fen Peas a natural, verifiable story to build the new logo around.
The solution
An evolved logo, built around the pea emoji
Cursor refreshed the Fen Peas logo rather than starting from scratch, moving to a friendlier, more contemporary wordmark. A take on the pea emoji became the centrepiece of the new logo, giving Fen Peas a distinctive, ownable icon with a genuinely good story behind it.
Top row: Left Retiring Fen Peas logo; Centre Unicode's official pea emoji; Right New icon based on the emoji
Bottom row: Updated Fen Peas logo utilising the pea pod icon
A website redesigned around the story of peas
With the new branding in place, Cursor redesigned and rebuilt the Fen Peas website, moving on from the dated, text-heavy Squarespace site to a lighter, brighter, photo-led experience that feels more like a friendly introduction to peas than a corporate brochure.
The pea blog got a proper refresh to bring it up-to-date. Cursor reviewed Fen Peas' social media activity and worked with the team to back-fill the site with fresh content to fill the gap since 2019.
Cursor also designed a set of shareable "pea facts" graphics, pairing Fen Peas' own facts and figures with the new branding, along with a template so the Fen Peas team can continue creating their own for social media graphics.
The challenges
Bringing the pea emoji into the logo meant designing around an existing, recognisable symbol rather than a blank canvas, while still making sure the mark felt distinctly Fen Peas.
Backfilling five years of missing blog content was another key piece of work. Rather than launching with an empty blog, Cursor worked from Fen Peas' social media history and input from the team to draft an honest and credible run of stories, giving the impression of continuity rather than a site that had just switched on.
The outcome
Fen Peas now has a brand and a website that reflects their six decades of British pea farming, rather than a dated site left over from an earlier era. The new logo gives Fen Peas a distinctive, ownable mark with a great story behind it, ready to be used well beyond the website. The new site puts peas, their story and their sustainability front and centre, with fresh photography, a working blog, and social content that can keep the site feeling current long after launch.
