Logo for Women's Reproductive Health Clinic in the Congo

My friend has a foundation, The Ida Lee Project, to build a women's reproductive health clinic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's a great idea, for a country with minimal healthcare infrastructure, and she's actually well on her way to making it a reality. But her website didn't yet reflect the awesomeness of her vision and dedication, so I offered to help her. This post shows how I was able to transform the poster child image of her project, into a logo that she can be proud of.

 

This is her original photo. This woman is an albino, shunned by her village, and dying from thyroid cancer. Her neck is bandaged, covering giant swollen stomas through which you can see her tendons, etc. It's very serious. As you can see, this photo is incredibly backlit, to the point where most details are just invisible. My first step was to color-correct the image in Photoshop, first with Levels to lower the mid tones, then Brightness/Contrast to drop the extremes. This left a mostly gray photo. I added Curves, to bring out colors in the shadow and high tones, and then Vibrance to bring it back to life. This is what I ended up with:

Not great, but enough to grant freedom of speech to many more of the subtle depths of angst this woman was experiencing, and recreate it as a vector image that emphasized the crucial elements.

Most obvious is her focus not on the camera, but on the frosted window. This alone speaks volumes. Second, the excessive netting, including a mosquito net, privacy curtain, and sun curtain; some things not often seen in western hospitals. Third, the medical gear, including the enormous bandage, oxygen tube, saline drip, and adjustable bed, not often seen in sub-Saharan hospitals. Fourth, the hand that has bunched up the blanket, but is too weak to grasp it tightly.

Using gradients and drop shadows as my motif, I redrew the bitmap as a vector. Now we have something to work with:

However, as is known in the logo world, Less Is More. This image, despite having some qualities with the blank face staring out the frosted window, still is too "busy", especially when sized for a business card, or really anything beyond the website. I condensed the power of the image to its most polemical essence, and this is what we ended up with as the final version:

Logo for medical courier company

This logo was made using Illustrator, and is used by a medical courier company based in Longview, Texas. While the PNG image appears to be stroked text, the original AI file was made so that each letter is a compound path, not a text line. This allows for a cleaner read by any third party vendor using an embroidery or engraving printer, and prevents the text substitution that sometimes happens when the vendor has a different version of the software than it was created in.