Case Study—The Evolution of an Icon for a Hospital Anniversary Campaign

What's a 40-year anniversary about? For St. Anthony North Hospital in Denver, Colo., it is an opportunity to celebrate milestones, honor their staff, confirm their distinctive role and cast a vision for the future.

A combination of outdoor, print and social media provided the platform for communicating their contributions to and partnership with their community. The message—We: You, me and St. Anthony North, Side by side for 40 years—celebrated the past as a shared achievement and staked out their independence as a separate entity from their founding hospital,while still honoring their shared history.

For their campaign which is launching this week, the client wanted an icon that would appear on the various campaign pieces to create continuity. Before we began working on the icon, we established these goals:

1. Must have 40 in it, to clarify the anniversary aspect of the message
2. Must differentiate the hospital from its founding facility, which has a similar name
3. Must be flexible for use in many types of application
4. Must be simple
5. Had to work with the logo and corporate graphic standards

Here's our original idea shown on a sample ad.

Since the hospital is in Colorado, the first icon was created using rocks—reinforcing this region's beautiful natural resources. However, after gathering feedback, some felt this too abstract, so we went back to the drawing board and came up with some new icons. 

Which one is your favorite icon? Check back next week to see which icon the client chose—and to see a different campaign element featured each day, including the light-hearted employee video.