RSM Visual Identity Refresh
2024 - 2025
Since spring 2024, I have led a comprehensive in-house visual identity refresh at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM). This is the first time in over 20 years that there has been a holistic review of all design materials, including: logo, colours, fonts, imagery, use of animation and all other visual elements - all brought together to produce a new visual identity that is built for the modern digital-first age.
A key aim of the project is to help the organisation attract a younger and more diverse audience, helping to support new members earlier in their careers, and increasing our worldwide reach – all objectives of the RSM’s 2021-2025 strategy.
Project Kickoff
As project manager, I put together and managed a cross-functional team to develop the project brief and charter, and to define requirements. To start with we identified the following issues with the current identity that we needed to address:
Inconsistent logo styles, none of which are optimised for digital platforms, animation or small-scale use (particularly the typeface and crest)
Inconsistency across use of the current identity across internal and external teams.
A colour palette that is too restrictive and inaccessible, particularly to colour blind people - that also inappropriate symbolism
Lack of design flexibility
Incoherent imagery and with many conflicting styles
Member and staff engagement
To ensure buy-in from both members and staff, a comprehensive engagement plan was developed. We designed a series of targeted questions addressing all aspects of the new identity, allowing us to gather key metrics that informed and supported our design decisions to the RSM Council - see left.
For staff I held a series of online and in-person workshops, along side a visual takeover of one of the meeting rooms where I could informally take colleagues through our thought processes for the project.
For members, I held range of online workshops and 121sessions, as well as approaching delegates who arrived on-site as our venue. In total I spoke to over 150 members. Some were quick chats, but many were in-depth discussions that provided valuable insights into members’ motivations for joining, their expectations from membership, and their professional lives. These conversations were essential in ensuring that member needs and voices directly influenced the development of the new identity, helping us create work that was both relevant and meaningful to them.
After several intense sessions with the RSM council, the new identity has now been signed off by the RSM council and is due for launch for academic year 2025/2026.
Design ideas
As a team we collated case studies of similar branding refresh projects carried out by relevant organisations to support our ideas. We also ran consultations with senior management and representatives from all departments to seek their input. This was all fed into the initial design created by the design team.
Design Inspiration
Stock imagery
Final design concept
Logo
Typefaces -
Colours -
Icons -
Imagery
Examples -
Imagery
In-house photography
Draft design ideas.
Identity roll out
The new identity is now ready to roll out, the visual identity guidelines have been developed, with new document templates to aid all staff. Training sessions on the new identity have been conducted with all teams to inform staff of how the changes would impact their work, as well as helping us all to identify the design requirements for each area of the business. This has also informed a full design asset audit, with a clear timeline for the updates these with roll out due to be complete in September 2025.
In addition, I collaborated with HR to develop a new SharePoint intranet site. Alongside serving broader internal communications goals, this platform acts as a central repository for all materials related to the new identity, ensuring easy use for all staff.