Lifesaver
Year
2017
Awards & Mentions
- Cannes Lions – Bronze
- Clio – Silver
- Global Award – Silver
- Epica Award – Silver
- IPA Award – Silver
Deliverables
- Brand Identity
- Logo
- Strategy
- Brand Book
- Print Collateral
- Digital Design
Lifesaver Identity and Campaign
Lifesaver is a new groundbreaking ‘auto-disable’ syringe that breaks after just one use to stop the spread of infection. Syringe reuse is the cause of millions of cases of HIV, Hepatitis, and infection so Marc Koska created this ‘lifesaving’ syringe. ‘New Packet. Used Once. Safely Disposed’.
The multi award winning Lifesaver project initially started as ‘just a logo and simple identity’ job. However, this quickly snowballed into a full-on advertising campaign, a website, and a 120 page in-depth book on Lifesaver from where it began to how it works.
The Lifesaver Logo
The heart is a universal symbol for care. It signifies love, unity, support. It represents life, the life we are trying to protect. The heart symbolises the reason the Lifesaver syringe came in to being. The logo needed to be simple, iconic and quickly identifiable. The heart on its own is not enough but by combining it simply and elegantly with outline of a syringe ‘The Lifesaver Heart’ is an unique symbol that will stand for the solution and raise awareness of this vital issue.
The LifeSaver logo was created to make an instantly recognisable logomark that is intended to act as a guarantee of a safe injection. The logo will be stamped on all packaging and materials, signifying that it is a new and clean syringe and needle, that it can be used only once and which will then be disposed of safely.
Colour and Typography
Red and black together with the neutral tan and white make the identity and artwork immediately stand out. Red is the colour of blood and symbolises love and life. These classic tan and white minimalist tones mixed with the strong black and bright red makes for a very emotionally intense colour palette.
The eroded type of Warpaint was chosen for its eroded feel which sits well with the distressed graphic identity created. The simple-to-read Din was chosen for its supporting text across all materials on and offline.
Advertising Poster Campaign
The advertising campaign just like the logo needed a unique outcome to stand out among the crowd and follow the same path as other mainly photographic-based charity campaigns. With this in mind, I created an illustration style for the very impactful images of a Gun, Mosquito, and Coffin all incorporating a syringe with an accompanying syringe re-use message.
As often talking about the danger and dirtiness of syringe re-use I wanted to carry this over to the illustrations of the posters to hit home about the implications of this and I did this by adding depth, texture, and ‘erosion’ to the illustrations, background, and typography.
The outdoor advertising campaign was developed to be placed not only in the UK but worldwide to 64 developing countries. The ad campaign also included footballs, bags, t-shirts, and clothing displaying the Lifesaver identity to areas of need in many developing countries across the world.
Poster printing process
To give the poster a good amount of lighting and depth, even with the limited colour pallet, I like to make the piece appear to have more colours than it does. I decided to use a cream-colored paper to allow for 2 shades of tan and 2 shades of red, mixed with the black line art.
After receiving approval from the client, I set up the final artwork to be screen-printed I busted out my handy PANTONE colour guide and picked some nice “uncoated” ink colours for the printer to use. I chose ink colours from the uncoated book, not coated. This is because papers used for screen printing will generally not be coated and the ink colour reacts differently on each. See below for some of the photos of the poster production process.
Lifesaver Gifting Book
The plan for the Lifesaver ‘Gifting’ book was started mid-process when photographers were going out to the developing countries with Lifesavers creator Marc Kosca and shooting many images of the deprived areas, but by giving them branded clothing and footballs and spreading the message to these countries that they shouldn’t put up with syringe re-use any longer. We set about documenting this message in the form of a 120-page book. Gifting.
The Grid and Layout Design
All 120 pages of the book are based on a complex grid consisting of six primary and six secondary columns that account for the binding. The grid-enabled untold exploration and flexibility of composition for images, titles, text and spreads.
The Lifesaver ‘Gifting’ book page spread designs are all different. Although the same flexible grid system is used throughout each spread is different. Some images were used full page full bleed, others just with typography, and some more copy-heavy pages were layout but where possible always accompanied by imagery and graphics from the ‘distressed’ Lifesaver identity created.
Digital Design
The website design needed to follow the same look and feel as all the other printed materials created to form a solid unified identity. I created a scrolling site homepage split into the desired section headers each displaying imagery, icons and distressed illustration style.
