Branding a digital pharmacy.

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The previous brand didn’t accurately reflect what Simple Online Pharmacy was about. As the business was entering a new phase, it needed a new brand that reflected it better and ensured that people knew what that meant.

The goal of the new brand was to convey where Simple Online Pharmacy sat in a market full of online pharmacies. Some of our competitors focused on cheap, while others focused on premium. We sat in the middle with our focus on affordable and dependable. That’s what the new brand had to reflect.

Also, the previous brand was never consistent. It appeared throughout the products in different variations. The visual style was not properly defined and was misused internally.

What does the brand represent?

The co-founders had a clear idea of what this brand represented so to take full advantage of this I ran a short workshop with both of them to get them to explore Simple’s vision, purpose, mission. We left the meeting with me setting homework for both co-founders and requiring them to fill it out. This homework asked each co-founder to come up with a set of adjectives for what the brand was and another set for what the brand wasn’t

In the next session we dug deeper into the homework and refined those adjectives into a set of 4 for what the brand was and 3 for what the brand wasn’t. This was an important part that would help us define the brand’s tone and personality.

Concepts & ideas

My first idea was to rename the brand, create a more memorable and less wordy brand name. Something that could be used globally and to give the brand more of a healthcare feel than just a pharmacy.

After several discussions and pitches to the co-founders the name change was a no go. This was primarily due to the name being an important part of the SEO strategy as well as a high risk to change for the business at this stage.

This meant that we had to rebrand with the existing name, which was a challenge due to the length of the name. But a challenge that I was excited to tackle.

Logo exploration

I needed to find a mark for Simple Online Pharmacy that would encapsulate all that the company stood for and still be something that was memorable, modern and could pass the test of not needing to be changed every time trends would change.

I played around with a lot of concepts and finally decided on a direction to pursue. I knew that I was limited when it came to the word so the priority was put on the mark.

The mark is constructed of eight leaf inspired shapes looped in a circle connecting in the middle. This is a representation of the relationship the brand wants to have with our patients from every aspect of the business. From the tech team building the products to the pharmacy team dispensing their medication, we’re always around to ensure that they receive the best of care.

The reasoning behind using a leaf was that the natural and nurturing shape strongly resonated with me as a visual concept that matched the company’s personality.

Colouring in a pharmacy

We wanted to stay close to the existing palette to ensure that the transition from the old brand to the new was as smooth as possible. I updated the core blue colour to be more modern and expanded the shades and tints used to give us more options. This was our Simple Blue.

I added a secondary purple (Simple Purple) and a tertiary yellow (Simple Yellow) to the brand colours giving us a total of 3 brand colours. This gave us the ability to convey more to the patient visually than need to over rely on words.

There was also a set of 3 UI colours added. Neutral black with a hint of our Simple Blue for texts, content and general background colours. Positive green for all the happy outcomes in the UI. Danger red for all the dangerous and negative situations in the UI

Typography

One of the biggest requirements from the business was that the typography needs to be available in every piece of software that we use in the business. This was an issue with the previous brands as there was no defined font so teams used whatever they wanted.

In the end we decided to go for really simple Google fonts Karla for our main brand and Roboto for anything else. This meant that every department in the company would be able to access this font on the tools they used, from the management team using google docs all the way to the warehouse team printing shipping labels.

Conclusion

The brand has now had its soft launch and is being used on all digital products as well as most print material. Once the brand new NHS web app launches the brand will have its full debut.