ABOUT

SomeOne is working with Nuffield Health — the UK’s largest healthcare charity — to develop a new strategic focus and translate that across a new visual and verbal BrandWorld.

Nuffield Health offers an extensive network of Gyms across the UK. It also boasts a network of Hospitals. However many people only know them for one, or the other. Our job is to join them up in the hearts and minds of customers — and to tell the deeper story of what Nuffield Health sets out to do not just for the individual — but for the nation. This is one of our long term projects — and one we are looking to commit to it for the foreseeable future.

For the last 60 years, Nuffield Health’s experts have been working together to make the nation fitter, healthier, happier and stronger, all for the public benefit. As an organisation with no shareholders, they invest all income back into their vision to build a healthier nation.

The UK’s largest healthcare charity –
The charity does this through outstanding day-to-day services in a family of 31 award-winning hospitals, 112 fitness and wellbeing clubs, healthcare clinics, and over 200 workplace wellbeing services, and through flagship programmes to support communities by widening access. What makes Nuffield Health unique is the breadth of expertise to provide connected care spanning from personal training and health MOTs to supporting people on their fitness journeys, helping patients recover with physiotherapy or emotional wellbeing counselling, or providing hospital treatments for illness and serious conditions like arthritis or cancer.

Building a healthier nation –
Nuffield Health delivers unsurpassed standards, with a sector-leading 94% of hospitals judged good or excellent by national regulators, unsurprisingly they are trusted by the NHS, private medical insurers, employers and the general public to provide exceptional health and wellbeing services to the nation.

But what also makes them different is a commitment to flagship programmes to widen access, be that improving the lives of hundreds of children with cystic fibrosis through free exercise classes, or by pioneering the world’s largest research project into how exercise can help men recovering from prostate cancer, or by partnering with schools to provide thousands of pupils with free timetabled programmes to improve their health and wellbeing. They are committed to the vision of building a healthier nation.

A new lead brand partner for Nuffield Health –
Nuffield Health looked to SomeOne to become their new lead brand partner. Looking at all channels and all communications — SomeOne has partnered with the organisation to develop a new guiding strategy, a new visual operating system for both Gyms & Hospitals — and ongoing guardianship for all primary branded items.

A new operating system for health –
With the new strategic position clear — we set to work developing a full visual and verbal operating system for the brand. There was nothing wrong with the existing symbol — that was well recognised in and out of the sector — and the signature green stood out well against the competitors. So we built from there. Working with Colophon, the typeface has been re-cut in a variety of new weights with an extended set of glyphs and has been entirely re-crafted to work better in digital and printed applications.

Infographics –
We designed an entire set of infographic systems to enable statistics and data to be more easily digested at speed. The iconography is designed to work in partnership with the bespoke typeface.

Innovative brand states –
The branding is designed for a digital environment. Brands that engage more deeply, move. So we have created visual assets specifically for channels where movement is possible. From Social Media to television screens in Gyms & Hospitals.

Three ‘Tonal Principles’ were identified through research that have been highlighted through the new brand work.

Excite — The Gym — The Swim — The Spin — The Classes — The PT’s
Balance — Physio — Nutrition — Assess —Emotional Wellbeing — GP
Recover — Treatment — Recovery — Mental Health — Beauty — Operation

These three very different states can now be reflected and amplified in the design work. So the branding in a Gym can be suitably differentiated from the kind of design work appropriate for a hospital environment and audience.

Radical moving image expressions –
While Nuffield Health is a brand for everyone in the UK — it is an innovative organisation, continually inventing and developing cutting edge approaches to the best in modern healthcare. To amplify this we created a series of moving image assets that have been inspired by one of the the three states of: Excite / Balance / Recover. The animations reflect the states through their movement, colour & form and will be used throughout the brand applications where ever there are opportunities for moving image. The tonal flex needed to move between the three states of Excite / Balance / Recover is also embodies by three types of pattern. These assets can be deployed at speed, scale and significance in any visual channel.

Through the creation of many assets, we’re branding spaces, places and surfaces without the need for repetitive logo-centric options.

This is important as Nuffield is a brand that is experienced frequently. Gyms see customers very regularly — Hospitals have many touchpoints for patients and their families. So it is immediately useful to have more than just a logo to help remind people where they are and who they are being looked after by. A more involving and varied visual brand experience better endures repeated views. The work on the brand does not exist purely for the customer. The entire Nuffield Health family benefits from the new approach.

We’ve been working on both the external and internally facing brand, with new thinking rolling out throughout the headquarters and behind the scenes at the Gyms & Hospitals. All new thinking, strategy, extensive tone of voice guidance and of course all the static visual and moving assets have been housed in an online guideline system to enable the multiple agencies and suppliers to work from a single brand source that is never out of date.