Anatomy creates people-first brand for Ireland’s first health gallery
Anatomy has created the identity for Humanarium, Ireland’s first health and well-being gallery.
The London-based studio came up with the name and branding for the gallery, which has been opened by the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI). It’s on the ground floor of the RCSI’s new eight-storey research and education centre – the first new building on St Stephen’s Green, in the heart of Dublin, for 200 years.
Starting in February, the space, designed by Henry J Lyons architects, will host free exhibitions, talks and other events, and there is a cafe, which recently opened. It describes itself as “small space full of big ideas.”
“This came out of a desire to open up the work the RCSI does – in research, education and professional development – to a wider audience,” gallery director Alison Boyle explains.
“Healthcare is becoming more about dialogue and conversation. So there was a desire to create a public space that would be a physical manifestation of that more open attitude.”
The gallery opens amid growing concerns about misinformation in the health and well-being space. Boyle says Humanarium wasn’t conceived as a reaction to that, and has been in the works for several years. But that backdrop did sharpen the RCSI’s mission to create, “ a forum for trusted healthcare advice and information.”
“It’s hard to know what’s reliable and what isn’t,” she says. “RCSI is known as a source of trusted expertise, so this felt like an opportunity.”
The team began by speaking to nearly 2,000 people, to understand what they might want from the gallery. Boyle divides the audience into three broad segments – health curious, health conscious and health committed – and the aim was to create a space for all these audiences, who have different levels of knowledge and interest.
The breadth and depth of this research also helped the team sell the “desire to create something markedly different” into the RCSI stakeholders, whose scientific backgrounds, Boyle explains, draws them to arguments, “grounded in data and evidence.”
Tom Shuttleworth, Anatomy’s co-founder and creative partner, said this research showed that while the RCSI had an “amazing reputation” in Ireland, it could come across as “quite stand-offish.”
“The question this raised early on was how to take all this knowledge and information the RCSI has, and make it more human and dialogue-focused,” he says.
That challenge shaped everything from the strategy and positioning to the name and visual design.
The suffix “arium” means “a place for” and so Humanarium spoke to the gallery’s welcoming and people-first mission, in an abstract and enjoyably old-school way.
The logotype too centres people – quite literally – with a small figure formed by the ‘n’.
“We wanted it to be as simple and as confident as possible, so people can read, and recognise it, instantly,” Shuttleworth says. “This humanist symbol is inclusive and accessible, and we can use it as a breakaway device to combine with imagery and motion.”
The striking colour palette, featuring bright orange and hot pink, is a deliberate departure from the RCSI’s well-known red and white branding, which Boyle explains “speaks to the long tradition of medical history.”
“There was a conscious decision to move away from anything too medical, to get away from the ‘white coat syndrome’ where people can feel quite intimidated in a professional medical context,” Boyle says. “So we wanted something that felt really different.”
She says the new colour palette has already created a “vibrant pop of colour” as the identity rolls out in Dublin’s grey winter months. And she points out that the colour palette has a lot of flex – a calmer lilac is already is use in touchpoints like internal signage.
Much of the art direction centres around gradient images of people, which Shuttleworth says reflects the fluidity of a new kind of space, a new chapter for the RCSI, and the brand’s positioning – “the science of you.”
“It’s about getting under the skin of people,” he says.
For the the type, the team chose FK Grotesk for the main wordmark and headlines, alongside Fractal. Shuttleworth says the combination balances legibility with “personality and energy.”
“As with the colour, it was all about removing barriers,” he says. “We wanted to avoid anything that felt too corporate, or too medical.”
This carried over to the tone of voice, which Shuttleworth says was designed to be “as conversational as possible.” A lot of the copy takes the form of short and simple questions that visitors might have, opening up the sense of dialogue that underpins the whole project.
“We wanted to capture the feeling of having a chat with a knowledgeable friend over coffee,” Boyle says. “It’s important that the space feels authoritative, without telling people what to do.”
Alongside the signage in the space, Anatomy also worked on an internal installation which celebrates the gallery’s donors. “We wanted to take our motion gradient and bring that into a physical space, so we’ve gone with a lenticular approach,” Shuttleworth explains. “People get this shimmering movement as they walk past it.”
Boyle says it’s early days, but the branding already seems to be resonating and attracting people into the space to learn more about the plans. Anatomy’s work also, she believes, sets up its ambition to become more than a gallery.
“In a few years’ time, I hope people can’t imagine Dublin without this space, and can’t imagine the RCSI without it,” she says. “This should be more than a health or science learning space – we want it to be part of the city’s social life.”