Mother Design creates an empowering identity for LGBTQ health organisation, Callen-Lorde

Mother Design’s New York office has created a boldly colourful and impactful identity for Callen-Lorde, a community centre for LGBTQ healthcare. Across its programmes, services and two locations in New York, it’s an organisation dedicated to providing healthcare to the city’s “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities — in all their diversity — regardless of ability to pay”. An institution of such devotion and sensitive care deserves approachable, awe-inspiring graphic design, and Mother Design have done exactly that.

“In the summer of 2017, NYC based LGBTQ healthcare organisation, Callen-Lorde came to us looking to create a new brand identity that reestablishes the organisation as a leader in the space.,” Mother Design tells It’s Nice That. “With a new healthcare space centre projected to open in 2019, it seemed like the perfect time to modernise the brand as they enter this new and exciting chapter.” The strength the organisation is reflected in Mother Design’s identity for the brand, with stamp-like typography printed onto not just one, but a rainbow of colours in an apt nod to the pride flag. “ Our goal was to create something that embraced the decades-long history of the organisation, while also aiming to be fresh and dynamic within a space cluttered with lack lustre corporate branding”

Considering this as a starting point the agency “created a new identity that served as an homage to Callen-Lorde’s activist roots,” it explains. “The bold and empowering use of typography and colour creates a unique anti-corporate identity that sets it apart from any other operator in the healthcare space.” This statement rings true when looking through the details of Mother Design’s identity and how it has been applied. For instance, an elongated serif typeface always sits across any piece of branding, applied in a large font size with confidence. The identity is also cheerful, welcoming in its colour palette, slogans and photographs of people always smiling.

While there is no doubt that Callen-Lorde has an extremely difficult job, Mother Design has presented the organisation as suitably and rightly empowering creating a "new identity elements, we set a foundation that we can build on for many years to come.”