Equitable Healthcare Action Lab
Creating a new visual identity for a growing lab
2023
Branding
About
The Equitable Healthcare Action Lab( at Institute of Design at Illinois Tech) partners with health systems, community organizations, and researchers to develop inclusive healthcare strategies and solutions.
As a student assistant at ID’s Equitable Healthcare Action Lab, I worked with Prof. Kim Erwin in managing the content generated from past projects. I re-organized the physical lab space, created a consistent visual language for the work, and helped set up the lab’s website.
The visual identity was developed to bring the lab in line with the new visual identity for the Institute of Design, developed by Collins, while creating new assets to ensure past, present and future work could be consistent and organized.
Typography
In order to match the visual identity for the Institute of Design (designed by Collins), the typefaces chosen were Bradford and Gerstner. While Bradford was used mostly for titles, Gerstner, being easier to read, was used for most of the content and templates.
Colors
The color palette was built using a combination of pastel greens and blues. These provided a nice highlight to the primarily white space, and a wide range of colors allowed for options in the templates, to accommodate different kinds of research artifacts.
Grid
The lab space is organic and ever evolving, with research added to the walls and boards everyday. In order to keep things neat and organized, I built the identity around the grid.
The grid forms the backing of all the boards, and helps keep things aligned and symmetrical. At the same time, the grid is subtle enough to not stand out, or visually disrupt anything on the boards, allowing students and faculty to break the grid any time they deem necessary.
Templates
To make full use of the grid, and to align past (and future) with the new identity, I designed a series of templates that are easy to use.
The baseline template is intended to go on 4x8’ boards that are mounted throughout the lab. This template provides margins and grids to help keep things neat and aligned.
Title templates are printed and mounted on foam board, and are made at the start of each project to designate boards.
Templates for research, photographs and section headers help separate different kinds of research. These are in 8.5”x11” (Letter) or 11”x17” (Tabloid) formats, which are easy to print and pin up on regular inkjet printers.
Accessories
To complement the design templates, I also chose a range of accessories that would match the colors and would be appropriate for the lab. This included Post-it notes (The Oasis Collection), Thumbtacks, for pinning up work (Large wooden thumb tacks) and color matched green folders.