Let’s get talking…
Enact - Brand Creation for the University of Sheffield
The Mental Capacity Act was introduced in England and Wales to help people who have difficulties with their memory, communication or understanding to make important decisions. It was known that all care home staff are offered training in how to apply the Mental Capacity Act, but we do not know how useful this training is, or how they use it in their day-to-day care. The Enact study is intended to research the effectiveness of the Mental Capacity Act, and the University of Sheffield needed a flexible, friendly but professional brand identity to use across the 5 year study, to communicate effectively both to funding partners and care home staff, visitors and residents.
The brief
- Brand concepts
- Brand development
- Report design
When
2023-24
Enact needed a flexible and recognisable brand identity to be used effectively throughout corporate communications as well as in care homes.
Accessibility was vital - with a clear contrast in colours and accessible typefaces. Research from the Alzheimer’s Society suggests that cream paper creates an easy-read background, which provided the foundation for the colour palette and simple look and feel.
The Enact Cream and Orange colours also provide a light sepia tone to communication, providing a nod of familiar nostalgia to images and illustrations.
The Enact Speech Icon
The speech bubbles from the logo also became a flexible and recognisable brand asset.
Enact illustrations
It was important that stakeholders had a library of flexible and diverse illustrations to use across their posters, presentations and other pieces of communication. Playful and stylistic characters were developed, which could also be used in collaboration with the Enact Speech Icon.
Photography
We utilised the Age-positive Image Library from The Centre for Ageing Better for positive and realistic depictions of later life. It was vital that any photography was realistic and avoided stereotypes - showing people’s character and with dignity. Selected imagery either focused on conversations, or smiling faces.
Presentation and newsletter templates, as well as the flexible suite of assets, gave the Enact team the tools to easily create necessary communication for use both in care home and stakeholders (such as funding partners), so they could focus on their important research.
Key messages focused on the lines ‘Talk more. Assume less’ and ‘Let’s get talking’ - emphasising the importance of the research to encourage people to speak about their later in life wishes.
Dr Alys Griffiths, Senior Research Fellow and Project Lead