Image Credit : Photography on social post and website ©Patrick Harrison
Project Overview
North London Hospice serves the local communities of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey. Every year, they care for more than 3,500 patients who have a life-limiting illness – and support their families, friends, and carers.
Red Stone were appointed to create a new brand identity that would convey the unique energy and warmth of the organisation and the community it works with.
The hospice’s audiences are diverse – patients, staff, supporters, volunteers, families and friends of patients as well as policymakers, schools, local businesses and other charities. The existing brand was failing to keep pace, and was over-reliant on printed comms materials.
Our task was to build a digital first brand, to help shift perceptions about what a hospice can be, and that spoke to a wider audience while retaining existing supporters.
The result is a welcoming brand, respectful of the circumstances in which it used, but designed to reassure whilst still having a necessary visual impact. The new symbol represents how, alongside delivering excellent clinical care, the hospice plays an important part in bringing together the local communities within three boroughs in the suburbs of North London.
The new visual identity will also be rolled out to the North London Hospices’s 17 shops across the boroughs.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Red Stone creative and project teams
Project Brief
There are around 26 hospices within the M25 which generally cover their immediate local area, with some run along religious lines. North London Hospice serves the local communities of Barnet, Enfield and Haringey and is open to their diverse populations.
Every year, North London Hospice cares for more than 3,500 patients who have a life-limiting illness – and support their families, friends, and carers. The hospice launched a new strategic plan in December 2021 which includes a new vision, purpose and values. The brand, although not in competition with other London hospices, had to communicate a similar level of professionalism, warmth and approachability to ensure its future supporter base and fundraising capability.
There was internal acknowledgement that the existing brand was falling behind others in the sector. It was over-reliant on printed comms materials, there was no consistency in the identity, the shops all looked different to each other and digital opportunities such as updatability, with the related cost savings, were being missed.
Our brief was to create a new brand identity that would convey the unique energy and warmth of the organisation and the communities it works with. Central to this task was the creation of a digital first brand to help shift perceptions about what a hospice can be, and one that spoke to a wider audience, while retaining existing supporters.
Project Innovation/Need
Anecdotal evidence suggested that more diverse communications were needed, moving away from physical notices and posters. This would represent a significant investment not only supporting work towards their green agenda, but it also creating the conditions for a more agile and dynamic organisation.
Primary objective
To create a refreshed brand identity which supports their strategic ambitions.
KPIs:
With use of the refreshed brand in their communications, they would see:
– increased brand consistency
– increased knowledge of the hospice within the core London boroughs.
Secondary objectives
1. To create a new logo in line with recommended accessibility guidance
KPIs: The logo is used across all platforms/outputs and for all audiences without challenges or adaptation.
2. To create structured flexibility within the brand identity
KPIs: The new guidelines are in use across the organisation.
Strategy
The corporate strategy which drove the new aimed to:
– retain existing supporters
– attract new, more diverse audiences representative of the community
– raise the profile of North London Hospice in the hospice sector
– raise profile and support with funders and government organisations
– reach the wider public.
The new brand would help to achieve these through creating a unified identity that would energise volunteers and one that staff could rally around.
Design Challenge
The boroughs served by the hospice are suburban and largely green. The concept reflects both the leafy nature of the area and the three boroughs covered. This gave us a design language and the ability to create a set of assets to deploy across brand touchpoints.
The hospice’s audiences are diverse – patients, staff, supporters, volunteers, families and friends of patients as well as policymakers, schools, local businesses and other charities.
Desk research included cross-sector market analysis of the five main brands in the sector establishing why they exist, their vision, mission and values or equivalent, products and services, plus how they describe themselves visually and in written communications.
We organised and hosted two brand workshops; one with staff and the other with volunteers. As some attendees would be new to brand development, these took the form of an introduction to brands in general and their purpose in defining an organisation, in addition to exercises around perceptions of the hospice’s current brand.
It was important to ensure buy-in from staff and volunteers to enable them to get behind the new brand with a sense of involvement and ownership.
Our creation of the brand takes a holistic approach to all applications – innovative in the sector. Also, being digital first, allowed us to use the more vibrant colours that can be achieved on screen as opposed to print.
Effectiveness
Roll out is ongoing and anecdotal feedback is encouraging among those who have had contact with the brand via the refreshed website and social channels.
The outcome is a welcoming brand, respectful of the circumstances in which it used, but designed to reassure whilst still having a necessary visual impact. The new symbol represents how, alongside delivering excellent clinical care, the hospice plays an important part in bringing together the local communities within three boroughs in the suburbs of North London.
The outcome is a very accurate expression of the original idea we put forward. The identity went through several iterations and this only strengthened and distilled the idea further.
What they said
“From day one you and the team just got us – a much loved local charity – and worked with us with a sense of honesty and compassion and demonstrated our core values and behaviours through the process and helped us realise them more in the concepts created. The commitment from you to help us get it right was evident from the very first meeting and your engagement with staff volunteers and trustees helped ease the journey we have been on.
What we have ended up with is nothing short of fabulous… The consensus since launch day on Monday has been nothing short of positivity and applause – for a design and logo that takes us forward as a strong yet compassionate charity for the local community.”
Graphic Design - Identity and Branding
This award celebrates creative and innovative design in the traditional or digital visual representation of ideas and messages. Consideration given to clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience.
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