LifeBridge
〰️
LifeBridge 〰️
89 Blocks.
Building a bridge to better health for East St. Louis.
The Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation and Touchette Regional Hospital received a grant for a 5-year initiative to improve health outcomes in the Greater Metro East Illinois region. They immediately set out to break ground on the first and only urgent care center in East St. Louis. This is the story of LifeBridge.
Normally, when you create a brand and a campaign, you’re selling something. Without a product or even an ask from the people we were “marketing” to, what exactly was it we were trying to sell? As it turns out, we were trying to sell something people in the Metro East already know and want, but have yet to see come to fruition: action. LifeBridge is the idea that hopefully, this time, it isn’t just smoke and mirrors.
The great thing about the LifeBridge initiative, is that it was already in the works by the time they started any sort of campaign or visuals. They weren’t searching for donations or asking the community to vote. It was merely a campaign to let them know that something was already happening and will continue to happen.
We started with a name, a logo and a color palette. Then we moved to create straightforward imagery and impactful assets for the LifeBridge “campaign” to usher in the new urgent care groundbreaking. This work was created with the intent to let the residents of East St. Louis know what was being built, how they got the funding, and who was behind it all. And that this new facility was now theirs.
The LifeBridge logo and color palette brings together the “medical” aspect of the initiative, while remaining friendly and hopeful, and lends itself to a vast array of icons and visual cues.
“Someone once said: there are no straight lines in nature.”
I developed a design toolkit with endless ways to customize, that included a color palette, photo treatments, a grid, line elements with typography, and +++ signs, and iconography in order to have lots of room to create work that spanned a variety of tones, from joyful to serious to straightforward.
Visuals were adaptable and used a line to connect various pieces of information on a grid. This helped to contain messaging and images in places where 1 image wouldn’t be able to communicate the full breadth of the initiative. And it also calls back to the real, physical neighborhoods and blocks where people live. Where straight lines on a map intersect with the curvy squiggly unexpected lines of real lives.
It was important to explain both what LifeBridge was working on and hoping to accomplish without sounding too institutional or condescending. And a conscious choice was made to steer clear from using stock photography or models, as well as to create visuals that communicated and reflected something else: joy.
Design elements and iconography took on a playful tone in kits for kids to support healthy choices.
After doing our photo shoot of residents and healthcare workers in ESTL, all the pieces of the visuals came together. Shown here are a bus shelter poster, print ad, and billboards.
East St. Louis
Though the Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation (SIHF) and the LifeBridge health initiative cover a large area of the Metro East region in Illinois, they focused first on East St. Louis. This was the the place where the first and one of the most important LifeBridge efforts was breaking ground: the first urgent care center in ESTL.
We met with residents, business owners and healthcare professionals living and working in the city and got some beautiful footage and images which are reflected in all the materials created for LifeBridge.
A few images from our photo and video shoot that took us all over the city. We started from the outer edges where the highway towers over the railroad tracks, to the many art murals on buildings around the city, to the SIHF healthcare center, to a barbershop and a Shell station, and even to ESTL mayoral candidate Marie Franklin’s house!
Behind-the-scenes with Marie Franklin, and a team of 4 people running around trying to capture sunrises, trains and smiles.
Lines and Bridges: The Video
The LifeBridge introductory video, title Lines and Bridges, was approached as a documentary-style short film. Our experience filming this didn’t feel like being on the outside and looking in. We met with people, we shared their space, we hung out, we told stories. We were all creating something together.
Our short film, “Lines and Bridges” was a 3-day shoot, shot, directed and edited by Daniel Kayamba.
Groundbreaking Ceremony
All the effort above to create what became LifeBridge, was ramping up to this moment. The time had come to officially break ground on the new urgent care facility located on on the corner of 20th and State Street in East St. Louis. This now-completed facility offers 7-day-a-week access for immediate treatment.
With the LifeBridge awareness campaign assets and the video in place, we then created event support materials. Everything came together on a beautiful, sunny November day, where community leaders, local news outlets, politicians and SIHF board members gathered to officially announce this exciting new development.
Event support graphics (and mini-shovels) for the groundbreaking ceremony for the first urgent care center in East St. Louis, Illinois.
What happens with LifeBridge next, I can’t say. You never really know what goes on behind the scenes, where the money goes, who gets it and how, and what will truly happen as a result, even when intentions are good. But I can say truly that everyone involved with this project on the creative side did it with pure love.
Credits
Client
Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation
Agency
Paradowski Creative
Creative Direction/Design
Terri Mitchell
Tyson Foersterling
Video Director
Daniel Kayamba
Writers
Brad Hauck
Terri Mitchell
Chris Ward
Video Producer
Kirsten Leimkuehler
Design Support
Loren Zaitz
Video Support
Erik Harken