Pentagram brands World Palliative Care Alliance

Pentagram has created the marque, identity and brand guidelines for the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance, which launches this week.

The WPCA, a network of hospice organisations from countries around the globe, appointed the consultancy team, led by Pentagram partner Domenic Lippa, in early 2008, to create an identity that would help unify the range of different approaches varying from country to country.

Lippa says, ‘The hospice movement started out of England and has a lot of history here, but in countries like Japan or Rwanda the concept is relatively new. You have discordance between countries like Canada and Britain, which have established hospice organisations, and African countries, for example.’

The hospice organisations, which the WPCA studies to help inform global policymakers such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation, also experience different circumstances and conditions, says Lippa.

‘Across the hospice organisations within each country, the people involved might be from medical backgrounds, or there might be religious groups running them. There are a lot of sensitivities. Hospices in Africa, for example, deal more with HIV and Aids, while in Japan, it’s cancer,’ he adds.

As a result, the strongly typographic mark and identity had to convey the neutrality and authority of the WPCA. Baskerville, chosen for its clarity and authority, has been used as the primary typeface, while Helvetica is used for body text. The look is defined by corporate cool blues, reinforcing a sense of gravitas, says Lippa.

Pentagram has developed a set of brand guidelines with the practical aim of simplifying implementation as much as possible for use by a wide number of organisations around the world, on a tight budget. It has also created print templates for items such as posters.

‘When it comes to implementation, the WPCA won’t have a budget for things like illustration. We’ve produced a simplistic image style, so that, from Russia to Rwanda, they can produce things like their own report covers,’ says Lippa.