Ellenville Regional Hospital
BRAND IDENTITY | VISUAL DESIGN SYSTEM | WEBSITE
Raising Awareness by Design
Helping a hospital reconnect with its community
Ellenville Regional Hospital is a small rural hospital with an outstanding reputation. For years, ERH has proudly provided exceptional health and wellness services for the people who live, work and visit southern Ulster County, New York.
Despite its size and service area, it’s received regional and national recognition for its innovative care programs and initiatives - such as its revolutionary work on the opioid crisis.
This wasn’t always the case. Poor management in the early 2000s left ERH in low regard with the local communities, to the point where potential patients were seeking other healthcare options in an area with few alternatives.
Designing a new direction
A new CEO came on board, transforming the hospital’s business operations with a sustainable model focused on quality. ERH now needed patients and referrers to recognize this dramatic turnaround and be convinced of its restored reputation.
In 2013 we were appointed to develop a new website. However, it was clear early in the discovery phase that a new brand identity design was necessary to fully realize ERH's restored position as a leader in specialty care services.
Finding the right line – representing the brand
The rationale for a new brand identity design was simple. For ERH’s message to be truly effective, it needed to be present at every point of contact – starting at the website, through its internal and external communications and into the physical building.
ERH’s new brand identity was built around its vision of delivering innovative care and vital services with compassion and respect. It would showcase its commitment to supporting patients, their families and friends, and local communities with the theme “Healthcare Close to Home.”
To understand the essence of ERH’s values and uncover its brand, we conducted extensive research with leadership and key staff. We distilled our learnings from this discovery phase into a simple, powerful statement for all of ERH’s internal and external communications:
Innovating. Collaborating. Providing Award-winning Care.
Rising signs – a new take on an old logo
As the main feature of the new visual design, a new logo would ensure the hospital was easily identifiable while maintaining its local heritage.
The hospital was keen to keep elements of the original logo. In the redesign, we emphasized the rising sun to symbolize hope rising over the landscape elements that represent the area ERH serves. We added the hospital's full name and new tagline to ensure clarity and brand consistency.
The heart of the operation – a new website
We designed ERH’s new website from scratch, with a clear focus on the benefits ERH provides in regard to its professionalism, scope of services, location and accessibility. The new site needed to present a lot of information for users, so a clean layout and simple navigation were key elements in our design.
Additionally, the look and feel of the site had to communicate and reassure its communities that ERH is the best choice for healthcare close to home. The new site confirmed ERH as welcoming, compassionate, and trusted to provide excellent, skilled, specialist care.
Meeting the brief
This was a hugely rewarding project, and we were delighted to further ERH's turnaround after a period of benign neglect. With the leadership's and key staff's cooperation, we delivered a strong brand and visual design system that encapsulated the warmth, dedication and motivation of an innovative local care provider.
We always hope the pride and effort we put into a brand or design project develops into a great client relationship. With ERH, we were fortunate to work on their brand communications for years after we created their new identity design.
Change is fuel for growth and possibility.
SETH GODIN