Dubai Health Authority
A star with one corner left open. The name completes it.Antoni Gerges, Creative Director, Brand & Experiential · AntBrush
Dubai’s new health authority asked its own staff to choose its mark. They chose ours. I led the identity and its launch across the city.
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Eight agencies were invited and four were shortlisted. Each of the four presented its logo and its meaning in a film. That part is my own account; the pitch film has not been found.
Our side of it: four presentations in three weeks. Nine routes on 30 December 2007, a second round on 2 January, a third on 10 January 2008, where the star first appears, on its ninth page; then a final deck of four routes on 20 January. The line “Your Health… Our Future” was already in the first.
On record: the staff chose from a short-list of four logos by electronic vote (Khaleej Times, 14 April 2008), and almost 1,000 voted for the star (Gulf News, 13 April 2008).
The mark began as a bright light. Our manual says it: “For a brighter and healthier future, DHA is clear as light.” Its pieces are clear wings, for transparency. People read it as sun rays, a flower, wings, a butterfly.
Three pieces, and one corner left open. “An incomplete shape. DHA will complete the picture.” The name sits in the open corner.
One word for the whole brand: future. One line: “Your Health… Our Future”. “You” and “our” were chosen on purpose; the manual puts it simply: “We are all in this together.”
Turquoise for knowledge and wisdom, green for growth, black for solidity: the manual’s colours, and the colours of this page.
Tease, then reveal. From 1 April 2008 the roads carried three pictures in black and white, with only the outline of the star and one line: Your Health… Our Future.
On 13 April the logo was unveiled, and the same three pictures came back in colour, with the name. It ran on back-lit lamp-post boxes and unipoles on Dubai’s roads, and in five national newspapers and eight magazines, in Arabic and English.
It became my agency’s biggest project.
We also wrote and storyboarded a 40-second television commercial, on 3 April 2008. It was not made.
No film from 2008 has been found. The opening film and the 3D models are made now, for this portfolio, from the artwork itself: our presentation pages and the manual’s pages (its edition of 12 May 2009), whole; the mark from the manual’s own outlines; the light boxes from the press artwork.
The outdoor print files have not been found, so the boxes carry the press artwork. The road at dusk is a model. The photographs are the record: they come from the media agency’s outdoor report, shown whole, with a mild correction for haze.
Draw many.
Choose one.
Our own presentation pages of 2007 and 2008, laid out by date. Then the mark, built again from the manual’s drawing, and how the city met it.
Four presentations, three weeks
Nine routes, then a second round, then a third, where the star first appears. Then our final deck of four routes.
An open star
A square. A leaf cut from it. Three wings, and one corner left open for the name.
The manual
Seven of its pages: the cover, the idea, the five steps, the kit of parts, the colours, the folder, the ads.
Tease, then reveal
Three pictures with only the outline of the star. Then the same three in colour, with the logo.
First, no name
From 1 April 2008 the roads showed only the shape, in black and white.
Then colour, and the name
On 13 April the logo was unveiled. The same pictures came back in colour, with the name.
The mark at work, and what followed.
The logo on its cards, the stationery and the website as we rendered them, the launch leaflet, and a later campaign for the authority.
The result.
03 · In the newspapers of April 2008Source: Gulf News, 13 April 2008, “Dubai Health Authority unveils new logo”.
More figures
Short-list and vote: Khaleej Times, 14 April 2008. Reach: the media agency’s performance report for UAE print media, 1 March to 22 May 2008; it does not cover outdoor. Poles: the media plan of 8 April 2008, which is unsigned, so its counts are plans. Campaign: a US$2.3 million launch campaign, the media buy included, from our own records. Titles: the media agency’s evaluation report, June 2008. The media agency was MediaEdge:CIA.
Creative Director, Brand & Experiential