Campaign & Brand Design
Care Companions
An independent campaign identity for an NHS buddy scheme, pairing young people who feel intimidated by healthcare professionals with a companion for their appointments.
An independent campaign identity for an NHS buddy scheme, pairing young people who feel intimidated by healthcare professionals with a companion for their appointments.
Care Companions grew out of a simple observation: a lot of young people put off or avoid healthcare altogether because the environment itself — the waiting room, the unfamiliar professional, the appointment — feels intimidating. The campaign proposes a buddy system: a trained companion who accompanies a young person to appointments, so they're never walking in there alone. The identity needed to feel reassuring and human rather than clinical, and had to work as something a nervous teenager would actually want to be handed.
I designed a pictogram of two figures in an embrace — one supporting the other — tested across a few lockups before settling on the version shown here: a circled badge with a wrapping "Care Companions" wordmark. It went out into the world on a run of screen-printed tote bags and T-shirts, as a piece of campaign merchandise handed out alongside the scheme itself.
The mark had to say "you're not walking in there alone" without using a single word.
