Portico by CAMH

As Canada’s largest facility of its kind, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) needed to be a leader in the area of knowledge exchange on substance use and metal health issues. A multi-stakeholder group, which included external partners such as Bell Canada, Sequentia Research and other community organizations, had identified a need for a specific resource for information-sharing among a professional audience, which included not only mental-health and substance-use professionals, but also allied professionals, such as physicians, nurses, police, teachers, etc.

We also generated name and tagline options for the new portal. “Portico,” being a Latin word, worked equally well in French and English, a definite plus for a brand identity and logo that would have otherwise needed to be translated into two languages.

From there, we explored graphic identity and logo options for the new brand; we also created an animated version for video promotions and an abbreviated version for social-media and mobile applications.

We also were asked to help create a clear brand architecture to outline the relationship between Portico and the CAMH brand, because, while the new brand needed the endorsement of CAMH’s expertise, it also needed to maintain its own presence as a separate, collaborative space.

Perhaps most importantly, our roadmap process was instrumental in keeping the project’s progress on track and in focus, particularly given the number of stakeholders, often with competing interests, who had input into every stage of the process—by succinctly capturing background factors, discussions and decisions (including rationales), we created documentation that helped the client project team to defuse potential objections from stakeholders who were not involved from the beginning.