Experts in MS
Branding of the MS Society’s professional engagement offer, a network for everyone who works with people with MS to discover, share, support and innovate together.
The MS Society is the UK's largest charity for people affected by multiple sclerosis, providing news, information, research, and support. The Charity needed to develop a brand for their professional engagement offer, becoming a first port of call for credible, research based information and providing an open space for active dialogue. This brand would form part of a strategy aiming to increase engagement with external health and social care professionals through opportunities to support one another.
Through a collaborative approach, the MS Society wanted to create a distinctive brand that could separate this professional platform from the day-to-day work of the charity, whilst remaining under the core brand. The name ‘Experts in MS’ offered a bold and simple solution, that stayed central to the Charity’s values whilst providing an umbrella brand to expand into smaller areas; ‘Experts in MS social care’, ‘Experts in MS mental health’, ‘Experts in MS research’.
The design focused around the feeling of a hub, varied and constantly expanding. The visual language explores the origins and goals of the Experts in MS network. The rings are used to represent the gaps in knowledge, overlapping assets giving a sense of peer support and half shapes point to the idea that the platform isn't about perfect data, but learning and adjusting. Subtle references are also employed to connect the brand to the MS Society, with visualisations of the MS triangle between the network shapes, and the use of the Charity’s secondary colour palette as the primary brand colours.
“Abi facilitated the branding and design of our Experts in MS professional networking – organising stakeholder workshops and discussions; and then producing a number of concepts that perfectly matched our ideas. She did a great job helping us to decide on our key messages and how we wanted to present our network. Staff who participated in those workshops were thrilled how well their ideas had been represented. The identity is easily recognisable and we’ve had lots of positive feedback from new people joining the network about how great our resources all look.”
Phil Seddon, Stakeholder Engagement Manager, MS Society
