ACPHARM re-brand

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Project:

This was an academic assignment to re-design the corporate identity for Australian Custom Pharmaceuticals, Australia's largest compounding-only pharmacy. Undertaken as a major project, part of Master of Design from UTS by Alexander Vlassov. Working with a small team of designers, a professor, art director and company executives, below are the results after approximately 6 months of work. The brand is now getting implemented throughout the company and it's numerous marketing collateral.

Here is a short spill about the company and the industry itself, taken from parts of the brief.

Industry — pharmaceuticals.
Compounding is the creation of a particular pharmaceutical product to fit the unique needs of a patient. This may be done for various reasons, eg. alter the flavour of a particular medication; for patients with various allergies; for those who prefer liquid to solid medication or vice versa; to reduce or increase a dose of a particular ingredient in the medicine; and many others.

In the past, compounding was the only way to obtain medicine, until the advent of pharmaceutical mass-manufacture which paved the way for the current medicine model, resulting in the almost $650b industry today. These days, custom compounding only serves a niche market, but is seen as a growing industry, with numerous smaller compounding pharmacies opening up around Australia. In some countries, such as Brazil, compounded medication is still the main channel of obtaining prescription medicine.

ACPHARM is taking the traditional method and using the latest equipment, formulations, pharmacological theory and computer systems to create medicine, human-error free, but still customised for an individual. It’s comparable to the big pharma quality and technique, but individualising each medicine for specific patients.

For the last 5 years there has been a general acceptance that the move back to customised medicine is inevitable — a trend that is recognized even by Big Pharma, who are investing in methods for creating bespoke medicine. There is a large push toward the use of Pharmacogenomics to alter the existing “one-size-fits-all” pharmaceutical model.

Looking at the patient’s genetics can tell a practitioner how they will react to certain medicines, and which doses the patient should be taking, allowing for custom medicine companies such as ACPHARM to create these specific medicines.

After a little running around (see work in progress below), we came to a decision that this is it.

It's always refreshing to look back at what you had and then again to where you are heading.

This is a simplified Branding Guideline, just to give users a snapshot of the brand, the colours, font and some of it's usage.

At the opening night for the launch, we had a few posters put together to tell people the story behind the company and industry.

We created a few mockups for logo usage and also came up with something we call "responsive branding". What this essentially means is that the logo, even though strict in some ways – can easily respond, or adapt to the surrounding environment, without actually altering the icon. Few examples of this can be seen above right.

Conferences and exhibitions is something that ACPHARM visits a lot. Previously, the banners were mainly colour and text. Very little images used, cluttered information, mixed messages. We had to reinvent the whole proccess, starting from the main message, the type of images used and the placing of both of those mediums so they are visible from far.

As you may have already picked up, the logo was based on the idea of a DNA. Of course this was not a random choice of an logo element either, you can read about it, if interested, in the intro section at the top. When multiple icon are places side by side – they connect, transforming into a DNA. Eventually it multiplies and becomes the ACPHARM corporate pattern.

First live trial at a doctor's conference in Sydney

The final project show
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As mentioned before, this project was also a part of major project for Masters of Design. The opening night was held at Fraser Studios in Chippendale, 21 March 2013. This also was the launch for the new brand, followed by a private, 6-course dinner (and lots of wine).

Setting it up

Stickers were developed to fit perfectly on medicine bottle caps and other items, going out from the pharmacy. Compounding with Confidence™ has now become a symbol.

This gentelman had a great time in this clean-room full body costume.

After a while, it got a little too hot for him.

Other work at the exhibition was by Tanja Binggeli – unpixelated. Old press, custom work, tedious stuff and so great.

The 3rd designer of the night was Catarina Araujo. Playing with words, language and form.

All of this was followed by a private 6 (or was it 7) course gourmet dinner, prepared by Lawrence Wallen himself. Only Tanja was allowed to help with serving.

Work in progress
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Staying in the safe zone - playing with a bit of font and form.

The client asked for "no mortar and pestle", as almost every other pharmacy uses that in their logo. We listen, but we still give it a go.

Our aim here was to simply mortar and pestle to the point where it's only slightly recognisable.

Now that we got to the final point of simplicity, we are playing with colour and naming.

Some of the rough sketches we worked on, whilst away from the computer.

Now that we got one concept out of the way, we will try and listen to what the client actually asked for. DNA was one ingredient that they were hoping to see in the new design. We took DNA and mortar/pestle quite literally at one point, but quickly realised it wasn't going to work. We then took a DNA strand and broke it apart. Just what we were after.