The Brief
The Kansas City Medical Society Foundation launched a healthcare workforce program to bring people into health careers and help them move up once they're in. They lead the initiative in cooperation with several other Kansas City organizations, which shaped the whole identity.
The mark had to sit apart from KCMSF's own branding, wide enough that partner organizations could stand under it, while still tying back to the foundation. The palette came with the job, a blue and yellow carried over from another KCMSF program.
The Challenge
The project was on an expedited timeline, we needed a brand identity, a set of reports, logic models, and print collaterals all in a few weeks.
The program also didn't have a name yet. Because of the expedited timeline, the idea was to work on naming and the visual identity in tandem.
The Approach
While we worked through naming, I started drawing before the name was settled, working from the three ideas the foundation already knew they wanted: progression, people moving up through a health career; regionality, the Kansas City footprint; and interconnectedness, the partner organizations behind the program. Round one covers growth, a staircase cross, a river, interlocking forms, people, and a stethoscope.
The name we landed on SPARK health, insisted on its own symbol. Round two went after health, energy, spark, and connection.
The mark they picked does three things at once. An S reads as a winding path, closer to how people actually move through a health career. An H locks into it like a chain link. A four-point star sits above it as a north star. It ships as a full suite: stacked and horizontal lockups, one- and two-color versions, and the standalone spark for small sizes.
The Outcome
The identity went into use right away, across the reports, logic models, and print materials I designed alongside it, all inside the six weeks.
KCMSF is taking Spark Health to funders over the next year, and that collateral is what makes a new program look like something real.