A Personal View on Brand Mark Creation
Lost, sick, confused and in a foreign land: Iconography can be so important when you need to find information.
The work Go East did on the United Family Medicine identity/mark was an excellent example of personal experience aiding a designer’s creativity. Living in Norway for three months, working and wandering, helped me understand that good design can lead you to the help you need. When the language is foreign and the surroundings are unfamiliar, you rely on recognizable images to find what you need. I knew some of the language, but icons and marks helped the most.

As a team, we approached the United Family Medicine brand mark from quite a few directions (see the top of the blog), which ultimately helped our clients on their journey to a new identity. In our concepts, we strove to use universally recognized images since UFM is a community clinic located in Saint Paul and serves a culturally and economically diverse community.

To reinforce UFMs values, we wanted to see one person caring/teaching another. UFM also wanted to reference the new clinic’s location, which is near the Mississippi. To reinforce name recall we wanted to keep a “U” shape.

We researched sans-serif fonts for a welcoming feel, but chose to marry the icon with a serif font to give the clinic a strong professional stature.
In the end, the mark with the two figures forging a river made it to the final three and, with multiple refinements, was chosen. The new mark has been well recieved but, as a designer, the real reward would be to know that someone found the help they needed in a time of stress and uncertainty.


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