NC PAL

Art Direction: David Spratte (Registered Creative)
Design and Production: Emily Combs (Registered Creative)

North Carolina Psychiatry Access Line is really a mouthful. So, the much friendlier acronym NC PAL was what this Duke team asked us to style for their logo.

NC PAL is the foundational block of different departments, primarily Child Psychiatry and Perinatal Psychiatry. It just so happened that the acronym fit neatly into a square block shape. This did two things: allowed us to deploy the logo on its own, and gave us room to extend type to the right side of the block when the department needs specification.

Color was another department differentiator. Since each needed their own version of the logo, we gave each its own unique primary color. The children’s departments got branded with a bright, friendly blue, and the perinatal departments with an equally vibrant purple. Both are extensions of the Duke Medicine brand color palette—a requirement for many Duke projects—and are slightly modified to create something more unique for the NC PAL brand. We crafted a full extended color palette and typography rules for both departments to share so there’s an added sense of visual relationship between them, with only the primary color being shifted per department.

When the departments share the same materials, we deploy the primary colors together as a gradient. You can see this color unification in the printed folders and on the website.