A caring brand built on warmth and support Scars Uncovered
Service
Brand Identity
Role
Freelance Designer
Year
2021
Burn survivors receiving a Box of Love at their most vulnerable moment: Scars Uncovered needed an identity as warm and human as that gesture. Three key words drawn from research and founder discussions, and one found photograph of students writing encouraging letters, guided the work. The result is a heart embedded in the letterforms, with handwritten details and hand‐drawn doodles. They carry the same sincerity as the volunteers behind them. A cool color palette reaches the same warmth from the opposite direction, the way shade tempers heat on a bright day.
Understanding
Understanding the Client & Project
Scars Uncovered is a nonprofit that supports burn survivors and their families. Through its program Boxes of Love, it partners with burn units to deliver care packages during recovery. These packages provide comfort, encouragement, and a sense of connection at a critical time.
The project focused on two primary goals. The first was to craft a meaningful, memorable experience for survivors and their families, one that carries the organization’s message of warmth, care, and hope. The second was to replace a complex, textured illustration with a simpler visual concept. It needed to be easy to recognize and to scale across all media, while keeping the brand’s core message.
Insight
Defining Key Brand Qualities
Through research and discussions with the founder, I identified three core key words to guide the brand: Encouragement, Love, and Approachability. These values serve to humanize the brand while reinforcing the warmth and care that Scars Uncovered provides to the communities it serves.
Finding a Way to Humanize the Brand
The organization’s photo archive provided inspiration for the visual direction. One image stood out: two young students writing encouraging messages for burn survivors. The sincerity and energy in this moment became the foundation of the brand identity.
This moment reflects how volunteers dedicate time and care to supporting survivors, suggesting that a handwritten style would effectively convey the warmth and authenticity of their intentions.
Translation
Combining the Key Words With the Name
A heart shape sits within the name. It is a universal sign of love that needs no explanation. Its soft, rounded form keeps the mark friendly and approachable. Joined with the letters “C” and “A”, it makes the name read like a note of encouragement.
Translating Emotion Into Design
The brand elements capture the essence of this inspiration. A handwritten‐style tagline, hand‐drawn doodles and icons convey the organization’s heartfelt encouragement and approachability.
Warmth doesn’t always mean warm colors. Sometimes care means cooling things down.
Selecting a Color Palette
I chose a desaturated light blue as the primary color, drawn from the image of a cloud on a bright summer day. On an intensely sunny afternoon, a cloud softens the harsh heat so that people can stay outside and enjoy the weather, calm and at ease. That moment of relief is the scene the palette is built around.
Warm colors are the conventional choice for communicating love and support. Here a cool palette carries that role instead. Warmth functions as an adjustment rather than a fixed temperature: in cold conditions it is added, and in hot conditions it is released. This project meets people in the second condition, so the palette cools rather than heats, settling at the point where comfort is found.
A darker, more saturated blue serves as the secondary color, providing sufficient contrast and readability across media.
