Kathryn was commissioned by Pancreatic Cancer UK (PCUK) to design the branding for their 2017 fundraising campaign. The title of this year’s campaign is ‘We are on Purple Alert: Get Purple and Save Lives’, and the branding needed to be in place for their presence online and offline in time for the key moment in their calendar – Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, PCAM, throughout November.

This year PCUK are being more ambitious for PCAM than in previous years, both in terms of the income they hope to raise and in their awareness raising activities, hence the more urgent tonality in their concept and messaging.

The brief asked that one of the concepts looked at emergency iconography; not anything as specific as ambulances, probably more along the idea of flashing purple lights. Kathryn bore that in mind, and two of the four concepts looked at this theme. The originally favoured route was quite illustrative, and after consideration the second route, using the matrix typeface used in motorway signage, was felt to reach a suitable balance, retaining as it did the urgency requested in the brief. Furthermore, this route was developed from glowing, photographic imagery to a more graphic approach, which allowed PCUK’s key branding elements to be fully utilised.