Health Engagement Website for Mental Health Concern
Engagement website brand iteration, design and WordPress development for Mental Health Concern recovery colleges
Website Brief
Mental Health Concern provides specialist mental health services for the NHS in the North East of England. As part of its offer, the charity operates community recovery colleges that help people develop skills for self-management of mental health.
Our brief was to create two recovery college websites, inclusive of logo and brand iteration, for Northumberland Recovery College and Kind Mind Community, the Recovery College for South Tyneside.
Funding partners for the Northumberland Recovery College include Shine Charitable Giving, NHS Charities Together and Northumberland Clinical Commissioning Group. The Kind Mind Community has received funding from South Tyneside Clinical Commissioning Group, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust and South Tyneside Council.
A Design Concept for Mental Health Engagement
Our work began with the creation of a design concept, together with unique logos for the colleges.
Through collaboration with Mental Health Concern teams, we devised two cohesive brands based around the idea of a butterfly and a dragonfly. The butterfly conveys how people can escape the chrysalis of poor mental health and find wellbeing and happiness through effective self-management. Dragonflies also undergo metamorphoses, enabling them to shed their restrictive skin and fly.
Calming Design
The colours featured in the logos tie in with the accent colours used for the primary calls to action that feature on the homepages. Both websites share a unified approach to colour and presentation. A calming pastel palette was selected, together with clutter-free design to promote a sense of reassurance and approachability. The concept is further enhanced by our bespoke, soft-focus illustration that helps to guide the users without being distracting.
Imagery of regional landmarks in the websites’ header areas aid differentiation, set geographical context for the support services offered, and reassure users they are in the right place.
Health Engagement Website Features
Content templates enable the recovery colleges to easily publish a range of support resources and events sections promoting the colleges’ busy calendars of workshops, courses and activities. Activities can be readily tagged to clearly convey suitability for target audiences, e.g. ’beginner friendly’, ’group activity’ and ’online event’.
A further feature of the designs are recovery story templates which enable the colleges to communicate that mental health challenges are something that can affect everyone and also provide inspiring examples of how individuals have successfully improved their mental wellbeing.
Behind the scenes of the websites is the evergreen WordPress Content Management System. We are experts with WordPress and use our skills to make editorial processes as easy and intuitive as possible.
Project Outcomes
The new websites for the recovery colleges are welcoming, approachable and reassuring for users, whilst at the same time being an effective platform for the colleges to promote their support services.
It’s been well publicised that the Covid-19 Pandemic has had significant repercussions on the nation’s mental health. People’s support networks have been significantly disrupted by social distancing and, the fear of falling ill, or passing on the virus unwittingly, have increased levels of anxiety and lead to a deterioration in mental health.
We feel the website projects could therefore not have come at a more important time and we are pleased to have been able to help the recovery colleges reach out to people in need of support with their mental health.