graveyard shift: planning for the end

Today’s installment of Graveyard Shift is about a little branding project I worked on just prior to leaving one agency. It was for a start-up with a noble goal — to get people planning earlier for future longterm care needs for themselves or loved ones. My grandmother had dementia and lived with us from when I was in middle school until she passed away my sophomore year in college. She had a caretaker while I was in school, but I would take over after I’d get home from school until my mom would get home from work, so this was one that I felt a personal connection to. I’m honestly not sure what happened with this project after I left the agency — maybe the company is still getting off the ground — but I hope they succeed in shining a light on this super common, but commonly un-planned for need.

We hadn’t been tasked with brand strategy, and copy wasn’t going to be brought in til a later stage as they were still working through some details of their offerings. So we started with moodboards. Moodboards! How many moodboards have I made in my life? I have no idea. But it’s a LOT. So often I start these types of branding projects with moodboards, to get the client on board with a general direction. Almost as often, the clients are super confused by moodboards, and we end up just having to jump into logo design. But I try. With this project, I believe they nixed the third one but liked parts of the first and second direction.

I actually think there was round or two in-between these two steps, where we should them a bunch of logo/color palette options. But these were the three directions in the running when I left things.