A virtual poster campaign aims to “show love” and raise money for the NHS

Design studio Layers has created a series of posters which aim to support the NHS.

Tom Robinson, who runs Layers with Will Alexander, tells Design Week: “Both myself and Will have close family and friends working within the NHS, as I’m sure many of us do.

“Like most people we are isolating with more time on our hands, and inspired by the nationwide efforts already, we wanted to do our bit from the comfort of our own homes.”

The studio has launched ten mock-ups, which show billboards on streets, on the Underground and at bus stops. The designs can be purchased in PSD formats. Each costs £10, and all proceeds go to the NHS Charities Together’s COVID-19 appeal.

Layers approached ten UK-based design studios to “create artworks supporting our incredible frontline workers and to raise awareness across social media of our project”, Robinson says.

The brief asked studios to respond to the prompt: ‘Showing our love for the NHS.’

The designs

Many of the designs are typographic, playing on the NHS’ blue and white logotype. Koto’s contribution adds a “human touch” to the well-known design.

“Combining the trusted and well-known NHS logo with handwritten type we’ve added a human touch to recognise the bravery and hard work of the people at the centre of the NHS,” the studio says.

Pentagram’s Marina Willer and Stu Gough have added green and purple to the colour palette, with a poster that reads ‘love nhs’, in a bid to highlight the healthcare service’s “unconditional love for all our lives”.

Nomad has riffed on the Superman logo for its design. “With great power comes great responsibility,” the studio says, “here’s to the hundreds of thousands of everyday superheroes, working tirelessly on the front line in the fight against an invisible enemy.”

Face37’s design features all 102 nationalities that are working within the NHS, in a bid to show support “the huge cross section” of its employees’ backgrounds. “The Brexit debate opened up societal disparities centred on the role of immigration, often resulting in discrimination and antipathy towards migrant works,” Face37 says. “COVID-19, however, has caused the UK to rally around its beloved NHS in a secular display of devotion and appreciation.”

Post has created an animation design for the campaign, which uses the idea of rainbows to show “gratefulness”. It is inspired by the nationwide movement to display rainbows in windows as a sign of thanks to the NHS.

Post says: “The problem with rainbows is that they have an end point… does this mean our gratitude ends? No, of course not. Our gratefulness for the NHS should be never-ending, therefore we created a never-ending rainbow to keep saying thank you into infinity.”