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Healthcare has seen incredible advancements over the past decade. Emerging innovations have saved millions of lives and allowed us to make great strides. Just look at telehealth and the COVID-19 vaccinations. Technology plays a fundamental role in all of this - it has revolutionized healthcare and will go on doing so. What’s interesting is how the worlds of healthcare and technology have now blended.
Erasmus University Medical Center (Erasmus MC), one of Europe’s largest and most esteemed university medical centers, is a proud advocate of healthcare innovation and is committed to improving the health of our population. Together with the city of Rotterdam they took the initiative to build a brand that connects the worlds of healthcare and technology to drive innovation. We partnered up and built a bold new brand to turn this vision into a reality.
Erasmus MC envisioned a space where healthcare and tech visionaries can come together to share ideas, inspiration, and expertise. The goal of the fresh new brand is to facilitate and fast-track innovation at every stage - from ideation to implementation. In short, it would need to be a hub where organizations and innovators can think, dare, and do under one dedicated roof - all in the name of future-proof healthcare.
To get our creative juices flowing, we kicked off with an inspiration board where we brainstormed different ways of presenting the brand. Initially, three design concepts were presented. Each had a uniquely futuristic style to reflect the brand’s vision of encouraging innovation.
The first round of feedback left us with two shortlisted concepts. This gave us a better idea of what Erasmus MC was looking for. A few tweaks and refinements later, we presented both and the winner was chosen. Erasmus MC opted for a dynamic style, one that communicates the brand’s purpose through bold colors, futuristic typography, and scientific imagery.
Building a brand that stands out is tough. You need to be clear about your brand - its mission, vision, and values. Only when you communicate this consistently can you truly differentiate your brand.
Creating a powerful, stand alone brand was key. At the same time, it was also important to establish a connection with Erasmus MC. We hit two birds with one stone by adopting Erasmus MC’s brand colors as the primary color palette and contrasting it with a brighter secondary palette. This way, the brand colors reflect a synergy between past and present - it expresses how existing elements and ideas can fuel new ones.
Staying true to the brand’s mission, we created a logo inspired by Delta - the mathematical symbol representing the rate of change between two states. It’s an apt analogy for the process of innovation, which is reinforced by the tagline, ‘Where healthcare meets the future.’
Typography is a core component of a strong visual identity. Keeping the brand’s scientific roots in mind, we chose a monospaced font. Monospaced fonts are popular in biochemistry because they’re non-proportional: each character takes up the same amount of space. This makes it easier to align text in columns and present biochemical sequences.
Healthcare innovation isn’t necessarily about technology. Technology is an enabler that makes innovation happen. Healthcare is by people, for people. That’s why the photography style uses a combination of human-centric photography and microscopic imagery. Together, this represents the union of scientists and technology in the quest for innovation.
Each brand element is designed to reflect Erasmus MC Campus’s vision of driving healthcare innovation, from the logo, typography, and color palettes all the way to photography and brand guidelines (check out the full case study here).
"Innovation is the cornerstone of progress, and that’s what Erasmus MC Campus stands for. We’re proud to have built a brand that is not only unique and fresh but also paves the way for future-proof healthcare."
- Michael Vromans, Chief Creative Officer at DPDK
In the end, we built a cutting-edge brand that enables organizations and visionaries to come together, collaborate, and innovate. A brand that merges the worlds of science and technology to take healthcare to new heights. Knowing what Erasmus MC Campus stands for and communicating that through its identity - consistently and clearly - is how we got there. Here’s to a healthier future!
Written by Helga Torrezan, Head of Strategy at DPDK Digital Agency
The original article can be found at https://dpdk.com/stories/future-proofing-healthcare-erasmus-mc
