“We want patients to know exactly how we can help them.”

With a new CEO and new physicians on staff, the leadership at Grassy Acres Gastrointestinal Center knew it was time to develop an updated corporate identity to help present its new face to the St. Louis market. While they decided to retain the clinic’s name, they wanted a fresh logo. But unlike the name – which was the inspiration of the former CEO’s ex-wife – they wanted a logo that clearly reflected their business.

“Our name is somewhat esoteric – our offices are in a three-story office building in East St. Louis,” said clinic administrator Dan Calisher. “But our name has cache in the community, so we focused on changing the logo.”

Grassy Acres hired famed branding firm Pretension to design its new identity. The firm has gained national recognition for its “Brand Fabric Weaving Rubric” that boils organizational brands down to one simple metaphoric symbol. For example, the firm won the prestigious Golden Gloss Award for its “doves cooing” logo designed in 2007 for defense contractor Massive Dynamics. According to Calisher, however, initial concepts failed to capture the essence of the Grassy Acres brand.

“They were producing very high-end concepts, like a Euro-Brazilian version of the yin-yang symbol, or a grain of sand reflecting the face of a forest gnome,” he explained. “But we insisted the new logo be a literal interpretation of what we do. We wanted patients to know, simply by glancing at our logo, exactly how we would help them.”

The final concept – dubbed “Man lays pipe” by Pretension – won unanimous acceptance from the leadership of Grassy Acres. (A sampling of other concepts explored by Pretension are shown below.) To help launch the new logo identity, staff were given t-shirts, coffee mugs and enema tubing emblazoned with the logo, and a giant three-story banner featuring the identity was unfurled on launch day with the headline “The new face of GI.”

Alternative logos developed for Grassy Acres GI Center: