The Project
The veterans report, designed by Emily Knapp, is the first in a series NCMLP has asked our design company to create. They asked for a report that has more of a magazine design with all the information and statistics of a report. It addresses the legal help that should be available to the veterans because of health challenges they face when returning home from a tour, especially the mental or invisible challenges.
The Client
The National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership (NCMLP). Mission: Improve the health and well-being of people and communities by leading health, public health, and legal sectors in an integrated, upstream approach to combating health-harming social conditions.
Design challenge and approach
The challenge began with designing a report cover to represent the mental battle veterans have with type and graphics. Consistency is important and this was accomplished through the type treatment of the title on the cover and then throughout the report. The black bars with white type represents the black stripes on the military uniforms and was carried throughout the report. The cover also contains a graphic subtitle, the invisible battlefield, that fades into the background representing the mental health issues that are not visible health issues when returning home. The graphic of houses continues this theme of invisible by looking normal on the outside but what is behind the walls is unseen. These two, typography and graphic solved our cover challenge.
Designing great icons and tables became the solution to the statistic heavy report. The tables helped achieve the magazine feel by shifting between using colors and infographics to using icons and statistics. To add more interest the color palette was not limited to the brand colors of blue and orange, but also included the military fatigue colors of black and green.
