The Red Devils, a small non-profit based out of Baltimore, Maryland, is an organization that is near and dear to me. Besides my mother being a volunteer, she is also a breast cancer survivor herself, and we both strongly support the mission of The Red Devils.
The organization chooses to fund services that improve the quality of life for breast cancer patients and their families. Rather than putting the funds they receive towards research, their money goes directly to the patients who are suffering, to help fund meals, house cleaning, rent, childcare, transportation to and from chemo or doctors’ visits, as well as help with payment for the treatment and medical care itself.
The reason The Red Devils wanted to redesign their logo is because according to many of the volunteers, “people don’t know what the Red Devils are – they think it’s a hockey team.” The logo was very simplistic, and the aesthetic did not appropriately convey the spirit of the organization. They didn’t have the brand recognition that other breast cancer focused non-profits did, and furthermore, their logo didn’t have any breast cancer “icons” like the color pink, or the breast cancer ribbon, to help people identify the name “The Red Devils” with breast cancer at all.
The organization's logo prior to redesign.
The name “The Red Devils” comes from the nickname of Adriamycin, the bright red chemotherapy drug used to combat breast cancer. Those who have undergone treatment for breast cancer are more than familiar with the red devil, and can make that association, however the general public cannot. Despite this inherent issue, there were strict guidelines that were set for me from the very beginning: the logo could only be red, it could not contain pink at all, it could not contain a ribbon, and there needed to be a devil tail and/or devil horns. The business cards to the left were cards prior to redesign. They were very busy and contained too much information.
THE RED DEVIL
EXPLORATORY SKETCHES AND DIGITAL CONCEPTS
To convey the spirit of the organization, I wanted to try and incorporate icons that represented love and care, such as a heart or a “helping hand.” By isolating the actual cause of the identity crisis - the name "The Red Devils" - some of these concepts utilize an acronym which would force public to read the byline in order to identify the organization. For any of the typographic designs, the choice of typeface would need to be modern yet feminine, such as a script paired with a sans-serif.
In translating the thumbnails to digital designs, I didn’t find a typeface that worked for the first three concepts, so I created the letters by hand. For the fourth, I realized that I could extend the leg of the V to actually create half of a heart and include the devil tail in the process. Using the Gestalt Law of Closure, your eyes essentially create the missing half of the heart, but also recognize the devil tail.
FINAL DESIGN
AND COLLATERAL
