Branding and website showcasing UK life sciences innovation

Healthcare UK is a longstanding client who we’ve worked with across a number of projects. Life Sciences Innovators (LSI) was a new initiative, to select and then showcase 50 innovative companies working at the cutting edge of life sciences in the UK. There were six defined categories, across medical technology, therapeutics, drug delivery, digital solutions, diagnostics and precision medicine plus other UK specialisms. 

The showcase is sponsored by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), helping overseas companies set up and invest in the UK and assisting UK companies to succeed in global trade. 

The client wanted a visual style that would be distinctive yet sit under the UK’s GREAT branding. Our team supported with the design and production of all materials needed to launch the initiative, as well as grow it each year from a social perspective.

We delivered a website, overview video, printed elements, social posts and a toolkit that could be shared with campaign winners to access assets that they could use for their own promotion.

Innovation badges

One of the most important parts of the design was creating the badge for the initiative and the badges that the winners would receive for each category. We worked closely with the GREAT brand team, so that we were aligned to their guidelines while still providing a distinct look and feel for LSI.

Bringing the initiative to life through video

We made a short video to be used in presentations and promotion for LSI, and to get better engagement on social media. The video is a quick, engaging way to communicate key information and sits on the website as a project overview.  

A digital experience

For the website design and build we had to work within an existing development platform, Aventr, which places some restrictions on how design elements can be executed, when compared with a fully independent build. However, so that the website felt dynamic, we worked with GREAT branded photography and animation to inject a unique style.

Social activation

Aware that this initiative would need internal and external promotion to encourage the most innovative companies to apply each year, we created a series of social posts that can be used to promote key goals and generate interest. These were predominantly animated, to ensure the highest engagement, and included: 

• General awareness

• Encouraging applications

• Congratulating winners

• Event promotion, when the winners appeared at sector events

The toolkit

With a breadth of materials produced for this project, we wanted to tie everything together for our client and their winners so that they could use all of the assets correctly and build awareness of and engagement with their brands. We created an internal toolkit for the Department of Life and Sciences, so that whichever team member was working on them could do so consistently. We also built an external toolkit for participants and winners so that they could promote the initiative across their own social presence, email footers and other forms of engagement.