Reorienting an Essential Mental Healthcare Provider
The Vital Source for Empathy and Expertise
- Developed a new brand promise positioning Forge as an indispensable source for better mental health and substance abuse care
- Created a bold and graphic design system that captured the empowerment, advancement, and guidance that Forge provides
- Architected, designed, developed, and deployed a new website that caters to multiple distinct audience personas and needs while maintaining the integrity of the brand
At a time when mental health is at the forefront of the national conversation, Forge Health, a burgeoning provider of compassionate evidence-based care, was looking to bring its vital services to more people around the country, solidify its partnerships, and grow its foothold in the market.
Working side by side with Forge’s leadership and executive team, MBLM developed a new brand promise, evolved logo, design system, messaging, and digital presence for the healthcare pioneer. A comprehensive brand assessment identified a crowded, competitive landscape with a lot of sameness but also one where a powerful, emotionally resonant message was key to success.
As a result, the new brand promise “Vital Source” was created to define the essential and evidence-driven nature of Forge’s services. Beyond being a valuable addition to healthcare or an uncertain process, Forge’s approach was scientific, backed by results, integrated into the healthcare ecosystem, and therefore critical to better patient outcomes. The idea of a Vital Source resonated with how Forge provided empathy and guidance to patients but also extended to being a source of expertise and knowledge to industry partners and referrers seeking better patient care.
To complement this new positioning, the design system was fully refreshed, introducing modern new secondary graphics, bright and uplifting colors, and optimistic imagery that centered on meaningful interactions. The design motifs in composition backgrounds highlight touching elements of the Forge wordmark, reflecting the intimacy of the relationship formed between Forge and its patients.
The Forge Health website serves a complex set of audiences with unique needs to address, from those seeking care to partners and physicians looking to refer a patient. Those in search of a solution to substance use disorders are in a particular frame of mind that we sought not to overload with stimuli. Veterans and LGBTQ+ individuals have specific needs and are sensitive in being marketed to by people who do not understand what they have been through. A nuanced navigation within a unified brand enabled us to balance these distinctions. The overall design approach for the web pages is clean, friendly, calm, and clear. Content is well organized and presented with careful hierarchy to communicate effectively and encourage prospects to take the next step and reach out for help. Great care was taken to follow web accessibility best practices, and the resulting page performance (measured by Google Lighthouse) ranks consistently in the high 90s for load time, accessibility, and SEO. Within the first week of launch, engagement (as measured by scroll depth, clicks, and page views) had increased by 5 percent on average as compared to the legacy website.
