Dr Angela reached out to us with her Practice Manager Danielle in late 2022 to discuss a logo and branding project for a newly setup medical practice located in New South Wales, Australia. The area where the practice is located, had only male doctors practicing in this field, so the team wanted us to ensure that the logo and branding was without mistake feminine yet professional. Part of the logo was to incorporate a triangle design to symbolise the specific field of the practice being a Gynaecology and Obstetrics.
We started looking into typeface families and fonts that could portray the full name (Dr Angela Hardy). Part of the brief was to use simple, mono or sans serif fonts (mono fonts maintain the same width of stroke/line used to form the characters, whilst sans serif fonts can have variable width with the pre-requisite being that they do not have tails on the characters).
At least 12-15 typefaces were trialled both in upper and lower case and we quickly slimmed it down to three types, all similar in style and appearance although each with their own merits. Some were great in lowercase only, whilst another was great in uppercase characters.
After the initial concepts started to be developed, we needed a complementary colour to co-exist within the branding suite which gave the feminine quality that the client was looking for. Through research we found that a large number of logos used in this medical field were in pastel colours and often using script-style fonts. We wanted to be the opposite of this to give Angela's practice its own personality.
Colour inspiration can come from anywhere and we came across a colour scheme using a rich magenta and orange which was taken from a dress worn by Taylor Swift in the 2016 Grammy Awards designed by Versace. The colours command attention due to being so close on the colour wheel. They are often not associated together but when used in the right way, can have a memorable impact.
We presented our initial concepts to the team via Zoom and they loved one example in particular. We took this away and developed it further showing a total of six options that could be used. This was then expanded upon by trialling 2 other colour combinations for review. We also mocked up a few versions of the logo in different settings such as on street signs and stylised social media tiles.
The team decided the original colour scheme was the best and approved the magenta and orange scheme (which we named the magenta "Sorbet", the light orange "Valencia Rosso" and the darker orange was aptly named "Tay Tay").
Of the different logo versions conceptually designed, the team chose one of the simpler designs. We went away and did some final art by ensuring character spacing (or lack thereof) is correct in order to obtain approval prior to progressing with branding guidelines.
We then finalised the logo art by tidying up small details, ensuring all the elements lined up and sized perfectly, before documenting the character settings (kerning, leading, paragraph height etc) for inclusion. Once the final art for the logo was completed, we created a comprehensive branding guidelines detailing colours, positioning, exclusion zones, typefaces, copy text style, heading text style and how to use the various logo types (primary or icon) in different collateral.
We designed concepts for simple everyday items such as business cards, letterheads, signs, apps, email signatures through to lanyards. Dr Angela commissioned many of the concept items and they made it to production shortly after!
Stay tuned for Dr Angela's website to be finished shortly.
