When the system is complicated, the experience shouldn’t be.
Healthcare can be overwhelming enough without making people work to understand where to find help.
When the Barrie and Area Ontario Health Team was established, it brought together healthcare and community partners with one shared purpose: helping people access the services and support they need.
Our job was to take an incredibly complex system, shaped by government requirements, multiple organizations and detailed healthcare guidelines, and create a brand that felt nothing like the complexity behind it.
Instead, BAOHT needed to feel simple, human and reassuring.
A place to start when you don’t know where to start.
Through our Define Before Design® process, we supported them with:
- Define Before Design® Sessions
- Brand Experience Strategy
- Brand Guide and Attributes
- Logo Design
- Visual Brand Identity
- Content Writing
- Website Design / Development
- Printed Marketing Materials
The Challenge
The Ontario Health Team model was new, and with it came extensive guidelines, terminology and information that needed to be understood and communicated.
But the people BAOHT ultimately serves don’t need to understand how the system works behind the scenes.
They may be looking for help caring for an aging parent. Trying to understand palliative care. Searching for mental health support, a shelter, a vaccination clinic or simply where to go when they aren’t feeling well.
In those moments, complexity becomes a barrier.
The challenge was to respect the structure and requirements behind an Ontario Health Team while removing the jargon, confusion and institutional feeling from the experience for the people who actually needed to use it.
Our Approach
We started by looking beyond Barrie.
We explored how other Ontario Health Teams were showing up, what was working and, more importantly, where there were opportunities to make the experience clearer and more useful.
Then we brought everything back to one question:
What does the community actually need from this brand?
That thinking shaped everything from the website architecture and navigation to the messaging, tone of voice and visual identity.
We helped BAOHT define a sincere, nurturing brand personality and translated complicated healthcare language into communication that felt approachable and easy to understand.
The visual identity followed the same philosophy.
A bright, welcoming palette of teal, peach, blue, purple and other vibrant tones brought warmth to a category that can often feel clinical or intimidating. Illustrated people helped create a sense of inclusivity and community, while the logo combined the feeling of a person with a location marker, reinforcing BAOHT as a place that helps connect people with care close to home.
We also developed practical brand guidelines and templates so their internal team could continue creating communications consistently as the organization grew.
Accessibility was considered throughout the website experience, with clear navigation, manageable amounts of information and an emphasis on helping visitors get where they need to go without adding unnecessary stress.
The Outcome
BAOHT emerged with a brand that makes a complicated healthcare network feel much more human.
The website gives residents a welcoming place to discover local services, resources and healthcare information without needing to understand the systems operating behind the scenes.
The brand identity gives BAOHT a recognizable and consistent presence in the community, while the tools and guidelines we created allow their internal team to carry that experience forward across ongoing communications.
And within a model being developed across Ontario, BAOHT was positioned to show what can happen when you take the requirements seriously without allowing them to dictate the experience.
Because serving a community isn’t about showing people how complicated the system is.
It’s about making it easier for them to find their way through it.
