Orygen

Orygen is the world’s leading research and knowledge centre for youth mental health. The organisation is relentless in its commitment to redefine what’s possible in global research, policy, education and clinical care for young people.

In order to reach more young people, more effectively, Orygen needed to unify their two existing organisations – The National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health and Orygen Youth Health. Their vision was to transform youth mental health support by bringing together specialist and enhanced primary care systems into the one seamless model to ensure that the needs of patients and their families were met.

A unified organisation inside and out would not only help to drive brand awareness, clarity and impact, but would reinvigorate Orygen’s employees, helping to build a stronger culture of passionate and pioneering clinicians, researchers, educators and advocates.

This was an opportunity to create a world-class brand to match Orygen’s world-class approach and services.

Awareness campaigns from both government and NFP entities have expanded our society’s understanding of mental health and the benefits of early intervention. Awareness is important to supporting change, while action is ultimately what makes the critical difference.

Noisy, competitive and at times under-resourced, the sector is facing increasing pressure to design and deliver services. With this in mind, we embraced the opportunity to break free from category conventions and create a brand with an attitude to challenge and the gravitas to lead. Rather than inspiring a movement, Orygen would lead a revolution.

We captured this energy, ambition and passion through a future proof brand with the central idea of ‘never settle’. Orygen will never settle for anything less than what young people need and deserve in terms of research, policy, education and clinical care.

In the spirit of collaboration and empathy, which are both at the heart of Orygen’s patient-centred care, we worked with young people across the mental healthcare spectrum to understand and inform the direction of this new brand. During one of these collaborative sessions, the motif of a semi-colon was discussed as a visual means of expressing the brand idea – a familiar yet meaningful symbol that signals a thoughtful pause for reflection with more to come.

We developed a brand identity system that captured this motif and supported it with arresting portraiture photography to capture people in an honest and raw way, all the while respecting their journey with all its ups and downs. Expressive hand-cut illustrations are complemented by an impactful two-tone colour palette that uses burnt orange to represent the relentless passion and dark green to reflect the compassionate and calming environment they provide.

In embarking on this brand transformation through unification, Orygen brought the organisation together in one physical space. The new brand signified the completion of their purpose-built Parkville facility, set to catalyse a new wave of progress and ensure that clinicians, researchers and patients will experience an environment from where their best-practice approach can be shared around the world.

Although it’s too early to understand what impact the brand has had on patient outcomes, online metrics show the new identity has given Orygen much-needed visibility in market. Since the brand launched, visitors to the Orygen website increased more than 200% from the previous year. Similarly, Orygen registered record annual users on Facebook and impressions on Twitter.

“FutureBrand helped us crystallise who we are as an organisation, which led to a robust brand strategy.”

Penny Fannin, Director Communications, Orygen