Swanswell is a drug and alcohol rehabilitation service based across the Midlands in the UK. When the trust approached us last year with their chosen, legacy name, we were a little unsure at first until we began to see that the ‘well’ at the end of the word could be of use.
Various typographic experiments followed, before the discovery that a piece of paper, crumpled at one end, could act as a suitable metaphor for someone’s life smoothing itself out.
We agreed with the client that it would be best if there were several different versions of the logo, in varying degrees of ‘crumple’, so we’ve agreed on six.
We’ve also developed a family of useful words and phrases that can be used as headlines and copy for posters and leaflets. Here’s an example.
Here are some of them used on a poster.
One of the most intriguing applications is their business cards. A little disappointed when shown traditional cards, we then showed them a rather more unusual idea. Each employee receives a small book of one colour cards...
...and when they want to give out a card, they remove one from the pad, scrunch one end, then hand over a carefully crumpled business card, a physical demonstration of their logo (and service) first-hand.
Another part of the scheme will be a suite of photos that we’ve taken of crumpled family situations. Drug and alcohol dependence places great pressure on families and relationships, so we decided it would be useful to have images like these, for certain applications (although we have to use them with care).
Here are more posters and stationery.
The scheme started to roll-out late last year, and more and more applications are coming through now. We’re working on some stop-frame animations too, here’s a quick sample. Apologies for the slightly crude embedding.
Thanks to our project partners on the Swanswell project, Brand Guardians. The project photographers were Alex Kent and Pete Gay, animaton images by Andrew Penketh.
