Client

The Swedish Psychiatric Association is an association for medical doctors and physicians who are active in the field of psychiatry.

Their task is to educate and update its members on current practices in the field of psychiatry.

Project duration

July 2016 – March 2017

Brief

1. Create a new look for Svenska Psykiatriska Föreningen (Swedish Psychiatric Association). The logo needed an update and the visual identity needs to reflect a modern association without losing their connections to their long heritage.

2. Build a new website for the association, taking it from a collection of documents in random order to a structured website for its members.

Challenges

The previous site was extremely hard to manage which over the years had resulted in a lack of structure.

The whole board was involved in all decisions regarding our work, so we had a variety of strong wills to navigate and keep into consideration.

In hindsight, we should have insisted on adding all the content before handing over the control of the new site. The structure we came up with, together with the client, was never implemented.

The Work

We substituted our normal branding workshop due to time and budget restraints and solved it by sending out a questionnaire to all board members.

From the results of the survey, we were able to make strategic decisions regarding the branding work.

When designing the logo, we were initially many people coming up with ideas and it was quickly handed to the Design Lead to explore the strongest concepts.

We did, however, hold a workshop on website structure. This ended up being a 10-hour task, but well worth the effort. We came from the workshop with a clear solution of how all material should be sorted and how navigation should work to avoid misunderstanding from visitors to the site.

Solution

Eventually, we found that a variation of the Greek letter Psi (the international symbol for psychiatry) was the best solution.

We combined the shape of the letter with the inspiration of old Swedish rock engraving from over 3 000 years ago, to incorporate the fact that it’s a Swedish association and it has a long history. The symbol can also be interpreted in many ways, a feature that we were aiming for. The area of psychiatry is also different depending on your personal experience.

The website we created was made to enable a clear structure of information, news, and documentation.

Team

Creative Director, Workshops, Branding, Design: Stefan Leijon
Webdesign: Michell Niemistö
Code: Fredrik Laason

Website

Behind the scenes

Sketching and testing concepts for the new logo.