Client
Detroit Wayne County Health Authority (DWCHA). Their mission is to coordinate efforts to improve population health of residents of the City of Detroit and Wayne County by assuring access to care.
Objective
At the end of 2012, our client DWCHA asked us to create a logo and identity for a new teaching program that they were offering in Detroit, called AuthorityHealth. This would be a graduate medical education consortium whose goal is to train doctors in Detroit in a community/population health program, and have them stay in the city to practice and give back to the community. DWCHA also wanted the identity of this AuthorityHealth program to be influenced by their current logo while looking new and fresh.
Role
I created several options for the logo that drew from the DWCHA logo, but my solution was a logo that brought together the idea of corporate/professional and community.
I set the word “Authority” in Avant Garde Gothic bold (a typeface similar to the one used in the DWCHA logo), and the word “Health” in Cheltenham book italic to give it a warm contrast to the sans serif of Avant Garde gothic. I also used the gray and yellow from the previous DWCHA logo and lightened them just a bit, as well as introducing an arch icon that referenced back to the icon for DWCHA.
I applied the color and typographic style from the new AuthorityHealth logo for promotional materials for the program, including brochures, ads and even patches for resident coats.
Results
Our client loved the logo for AuthorityHealth, and it has been in continued use for the past six years or more. Following the success of the new AuthorityHealth program, DWCHA decided to rebrand their whole organization as AuthorityHealth at the end of 2015. We added their mission statement as a tagline, “Preserving Public Health, Promoting Population Health.” After this, our client asked me to develop additional logos for their subsidiary programs and initiatives that needed to fit within their new identity system.
AuthorityHealth continues to have a very visible and tangible presence in the Detroit community, offering community programming and services to help a wide range of underinsured residents and families.
