Entry
Nexus Family Healing Illustrations
Submitter:
Jodi Eckes
Company:
DRIVE
Concept/Purpose of the Work:
Nexus Family Healing is a national nonprofit providing mental health services to youth and families. During our competitor and market audit, we quickly realized the industry was dominated by stock photography — often of fair to poor quality. Competitor color palettes also tended to be more conservative and predictable.
To strongly differentiate our brand, as well as speak to a more universal audience, we commissioned illustrations to reflect the wide range of feelings and emotions experienced by Nexus patients and their families. With compassion and empathy, we wanted to acknowledge the struggles and challenges they so often face, as well as reflect the hope, caring, understanding and optimism they experience when they work with Nexus Family Healing. These powerful illustrations speak to the shared human experience, allowing the viewer to immediately feel the emotion without getting distracted by the specific demographics of people in the scene. The illustrator was guided to use bold vibrant colors…leveraging colors from within the new Nexus color palette as well as complementary accent colors. This resulted in a cohesive, ownable and signature look for the entire 30+ illustration set.
Leveraging these illustrations as the cornerstone of Nexus’ visual identity was part of the overarching strategy to 1) support Nexus’ positioning of being an innovative leader in their field and 2) emphasize their brand attributes of being creative, encouraging,
compassionate, collaborative and driven.
Results of the Work:
These illustrations played a key role in the strategic evolution of Nexus. Not only did they reflect their brand attributes, but they enabled Nexus to quickly build brand awareness and recognition by leveraging them in all their brand and marketing tactics. Their signature, ownable look continues to instantly communicate “Nexus Family Healing” at every touchpoint, across all channels. Their illustration-centered visual identity is as fresh and progressive as Nexus Family Healing itself, communicating their expertise at every turn with optimism, creativity and heart.
How the Work Was Delivered to the Masses:
The Nexus illustrations have been leveraged in everything from corporate collateral and environmental branding to billboard campaigns, social media posts and employee/donor gifts. We also created a brand manifesto video and employee videos that take the illustrations one step further — animation.
Credits:
Creative Director: Jodi Eckes
Illustrator: Anna Godeassi
Tags:
Empathetic, Fresh, Sincere
Category:
Illustrations/Infographics