Tuesday, October 5, 2010
We got the call to redesign a logo for Alvarado Hospital’s new “Team Impact,” which is a team of techies in charge of transferring medical data from analog files into an electronic database (The logo would be used for team apparel, internal announcements and advertising). The challenge was representing data transfer in a novel way; the logo had to be unique enough to get attention while retaining the original’s overall feel and color palette.
The original logo (created by Alvarado’s previous designer) had a few problems that needed to be addressed to make it ready for multi-media use. The cracks didn’t translate well to small scale (i.e. web) usage, and the circle’s drop shadow was inconsistent with its inner shadow. The font selection was also inconsistent with Alvarado branding. Finally, the hospital didn’t have a vector version of the logo, only an old .jpg file (at 72 dpi) making it impossible to use for print.
The new logo highlights both its medical nature (the medical symbol) and the flow of analog information going in, and digital data coming out (represented by the arrow illusion) without losing the required blue sphere (the blue of the medical symbol which looks like a circle at first glance). We brought the text up to speed by incorporating Alvarado’s current logo font and pms color palette. The elimination of gradients and drop shadows means consistent results for both web and print media applications.
The shirts came out nicely with a slightly altered color palette. The negative space effects created by the arrows is nicely highlighted by the shirt’s color and material.