GOSH Charity has today revealed a refreshed brand identity to help make it more relevant and connect with potential donors and supporters more effectively.
A refreshed brand identity
The refreshed brand identity launches alongside a targeted brand marketing campaign featuring digital and non-digital out-of-home, radio and earned media that highlights the reality of childhoods impacted by serious illness, as well as the hope and determination to improve and save more lives through groundbreaking research and the best possible care and support for patients and their families.
The charity has developed a refreshed visual identity rooted in its history and introduced new design elements to help inject personality and distinctiveness.
This includes refreshing its iconic logo drawing on the charity’s extensive brand heritage. Originally designed for the Wishing Well Appeal in 1987, the distinctive teardrop face was inspired by a young patient’s drawing. The updated design incorporates the charm,9 innocence and authenticity of the sketch while introducing elements for a distinct, digitally native identity system and improving accessibility and legibility across print and digital channels.
The charity has also introduced blue as its beacon colour to provide greater accessibility, recognition and stand out. Blue is used in the teardrop of its famous logo and has been amplified across the brand design system to drive greater attribution and recognition of the brand.
A new motion identity
New animal illustrations, inspired by the ward names at Great Ormond Street Hospital, are completely unique to the charity’s brand identity and represent the collective efforts of the “doers” who are transforming the lives of children under the hospital’s care. When animated they give a sense of movement and togetherness as well as representing the fun and playful spirit at the heart of the brand’s renewed focus on childhood. The ability to animate the animal characters as well as the new font and pen stroke has been a key consideration throughout the project, as the charity looks to create a greater impact on digital channels.
A new tone of voice
A more direct tone of voice reflects the organisation’s determination to stop at nothing to protect childhoods from the most rare or complex illnesses. By amplifying the voices of children and families at Great Ormond Street Hospital, the new brand puts children’s lived experiences front and centre – from the joy and play that happens every day at the hospital to the harsher realities for families facing the unimaginable. Improving accessibility and legibility has been a key consideration behind the changes made.
The process of refreshing the brand to bring childhood right into its heart involved comprehensive consultation. Around 3,500 stakeholders ranging from patients, families and staff at GOSH, to the charity’s employees, high-value donors corporate partners and members of the public were all involved. The charity aims to ensure what it delivers is relevant and inspiring to its target audiences and reflects its mission to transform the lives of seriously ill children and protect childhoods from the impact of serious illness.
The project has been overseen end-to-end by the charity’s in-house Brand team, drawing on external expertise. Impero developed the brand strategy, Stuart Gough and Pentagram led the creative direction for the brand identity and narrative, and JKR developed the new motion identity.
Emma Guise, Director of Marketing and Communications at GOSH Charity said:
“At GOSH Charity we fund lifesaving research and life-changing services that help give seriously ill children the best chance and best childhoods possible. We are helping to progress new treatments and cures every day, as well as providing vital support like free accommodation for families who face the unimaginable.
“The world has changed enormously in recent years, and we haven’t updated our brand since 2017. Our refreshed identity, designed to be more accessible, inclusive, and digitally enabled, symbolises the progress we’re driving for seriously ill children and underscores the collective role we all play in realising it. We hope the refreshed brand will empower us to be more relevant and inspire our current and new audiences to get involved.
“Patient families at GOSH have been central to our decision-making process; their call for boldness and acknowledgement of the harsh realities of serious childhood illness resonated deeply. Alongside this, our unwavering focus on childhood and the vital role we play in protecting every element of it felt absolutely critical to bring through our new look and feel.
“We’re hugely excited by what our refreshed brand will enable us to do, better communicating our purpose and inspiring more people to join us in our mission. Ultimately, this means we can have a bigger impact for the hundreds of children from across the UK who are treated by GOSH every day, and for children with rare or complex illnesses everywhere, both in this generation and those to come. Because we believe that no childhood should be lost to serious illness.”
