Project Overview
The City of Berkeley launched a mental health campaign to provide free digital wellness tools in response to COVID-19’s ongoing emotional toll on the community. This campaign delivered a strong, human-centered brand across digital and print platforms, expanding beyond Berkeley to inspire cities across the state.
MY ROLE campaign creative direction, branding, logo, assets, marketing materials, advertising, campaign strategy, iconography, copywriting
Strategy & Approach
The campaign needed to balance clarity with compassion. We focused on creating an identity that felt trustworthy, inclusive, and community-first. The messaging strategy emphasized ease of access and destigmatization. Toolkits were designed for rapid deployment across city channels. By developing a unified visual language and adapting content for print, digital, and outreach events, the campaign ensured consistent messaging and accessibility across all user experiences.
Creative Direction
Visual direction was grounded in approachability. The palette was warm and calming, with playful illustrations and simplified layouts that avoided clinical or cold design. The logo and campaign name were designed to be scalable and inviting. Social assets, posters, emails, and digital ads were built for different audience segments. The campaign’s success led to adoption by three additional counties, proving its visual and strategic resonance well beyond the city it was built for.
Solutions
Campaign Identity
A full brand suite was created for the campaign, including a logo, color system, and typographic styling that was recognizable, easy to use, and adaptable across departments.
Campaign Materials & Marketing
The campaign included a messaging framework and visual toolkit for Berkeley’s partners to implement with ease. This included flyers, email templates, digital ads, and outreach signage.
Scalable Campaign System
Assets were built modularly so other cities could easily adopt the system. With editable templates, iconography, and shareable content, the brand maintained its integrity while expanding to new audiences.
Outcomes
Berkeley Wellness for All created meaningful access to mental health resources. Its success proved that thoughtful branding can have measurable impact when paired with clarity, flexibility, and care. The goal was to connect Berkeley residents, workers, and students with free mental health resources. The strategy was simple: make self-care feel accessible, human, and stigma-free.
Objective: Obtain and maintain a steady app enrollment/download rate of 10% among the target audience each month over the course of the campaign.
Outcome: 72% download rate per month.
Objective: Secure 5 community partnerships each month over the lifespan of the campaign. That was 30 total partnerships in 6 months.
Outcome: Over 100 community partnerships were created in the first two months of the campaign.
Noël Norah 