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All in a day’s work

Are you back at your desk, keen to get stuck into the New Year whatever it might bring? You’re refreshed by the Christmas break, reinvigorated by your new year’s resolutions and determined to keep organised this year. What’s missing from your desk? It’s a low-tech device that has never been bettered: the desk calendar. You can see at a glance the dates ahead and easily flick through to the months to come.
 
Here’s Caboo to the rescue. Each year, by popular demand, we produce Caboo’s own calendar, which, in its fold back CD-style case, sits neatly on your desk. Each page is a month, beautifully illustrated with a photograph taken by Caboo’s own Nigel Bradford. It is designed to serve the dual purpose of keeping you calm and ensuring you are organised.

If you would like a free Caboo calendar, contact Melanie  - studio@caboodesign.com

Thinking big with SeaAngel

Mitsubishi Power Systems Europe has recently launched the prototype of what is likely to be the world’s largest offshore wind turbine. SeaAngel was unveiled at the EWEA Offshore Wind conference in Amsterdam, with initial prototype-testing scheduled to begin next year.

The SeaAngel logo, designed by Caboo, will be used on the turbines and so we can confidently claim that this is the biggest job (size-wise) that we have ever done. Meanwhile we designed and produced the graphics and the panels for the SeaAngel stand at the conference.

The challenge for us, apart of course from the tight deadlines, was to devise a logo which complemented and indeed strengthened the already strong Mitsubishi branding. We worked with the Mitsubishi team in London and with head office in Japan, gradually evolving a design which works with existing branding and which works  just as effectively when it is used large (very large) as when it is used small.

Mitsubishi claim that SeaAngel is ‘game-changing’, using unique hydraulic technology, developed in Scotland.

Into the limelight

Allied health professionals and healthcare scientists are often the overlooked healthcare professionals, overshadowed by their bigger and louder colleagues in medicine and nursing. Chamberlain Dunn’s Advancing Healthcare awards for AHPs and healthcare scientists, now in the sixth year, are exclusively for these specialists.

This year Caboo is sponsoring a new award Into the limelight. A challenge for those in the allied health professions and in healthcare science is to find a way to describe to the public and media how they contribute to improved patient care. We invite entrants to show how they are moving into the limelight so that their role can be better understood,appreciated and developed. This award aims to search out projects and initiatives which have helped explain these vital contributions.

The closing date is 12 January 2012. For further information www.AHPandHSawards.co.uk

Logo Watch at the AHCM conference

What happens to branding when NHS organisations merge? This was a strong theme to emerge from the masterclasses run by Alison Dunn of Caboo, at the recent conference in Birmingham of the Association of Healthcare Communications and Marketing.

Participants of the two masterclasses, entitled What’s happening to the NHS corporate identity? shared their experiences of finding design solutions that worked when several smaller organisations were merged into a larger NHS Trust. Branding coherence was vital but equally separate identities and longstanding loyalties had to be respected.

Drawing on material from our Logo Watch initiative, we showed how former NHS organisations were often eager to escape from the confines of NHS branding; while independent healthcare providers were keen to come under the NHS umbrella in order to use the logo as a badge of quality and accessibility.

Participants were particularly anxious about the naming and branding of the Clinical Commissioning Groups as official guidance is still awaited while CCGs were keen to get their own identities established. They were very much aware that PCTs had often struggled to find a clear identity which the public could recognise.

Our Logo Watch campaign remains in full swing as we monitor what is happening to NHS branding as new organsiations break away, others come in and new partnerships require the use of multiple logos.

Join us in following what happens to that most trusted logo.

NHS Logo Watch
Join us in the NHS logo watch

The NHS brand is resilient and flexible enough to survive the changing landscape in healthcare This was the view of healthcare communicators meeting at Gothic House In June to consider what's happening to the NHS corporate identity. Members of the Association of Healthcare Communications and Marketing (AHCM), guests of Caboo, agreed that the brand was under strain as emerging organisations sought their own identity and new independent sector providers rushed to use the NHS logo along side their own. They have agreed to continue to Logo Watch.

Although details of the Coalition Government's revised plans for the NHS emerged in July, the landscape remains foggy as the transition is slowed and even more new bodies are to be created eg local clinical senates. Our Logo Watch campaign is in full swing as we monitor what is happening to NHS branding as new organsiations break away, others come in and new partnerships require the use of multiple logos.

 Join us in following what happens to that most trusted logo.

Email ali@chamberdunn.co.uk

Download the white paper here

Print or on-line
Horses for courses in choosing print or on-line

A strong endorsement for the enduring power of print emerged from a lively discussion on the NHS Communications Network on LinkedIn about our report, Print v on-line: getting the balance right.

Chris Birdsall reminded us that many people who need health service information do not have access to a computer. Steve Dixon agreed, pointing out that although it is good to cut out unnecessary paper waste, we needed to think about communities who don’t use computers. Christine Patch said that the key was to ensure that print publications are properly targeted and clearly written so they achieve their aim.

Lynn Plant said: "We should be striving to match the right form of communication to the right audience, the correct use of the mix will ensure we collect all our audience and bring them into the fold. There will always be a trend toward emerging technology…but there will always be a generation of the public which stay with the tried and tested methods, printed or otherwise."

April Doty commented that she sensed that those who work in the caring professions are less likely than those who don’t to embrace technology.

Click here to read the whole discussion.