The Challenge
The Stollery Children’s Hospital Foundation set out to make the public case for a standalone children’s hospital in the north. The size of the ask was daunting enough. A cause this big and this political shifts with public sentiment and government will, and any campaign built for one fixed goal risked going obsolete the moment that goal changed.
The Insight
Belief in a cause with a long, uncertain timeline like this one rested on visible forward motion: proof that the thing is moving when the endpoint is beyond the horizon. The path from today to a better tomorrow is never straight. It’s full of turns, climbs, and setbacks. People will follow a direction they can see, long before they can see where it lands. We knew that belief in the cause needed continuous cultivation, so we strategized for a campaign facing strong headwinds.
The Idea
Tomorrow & Today.
We gave the journey a shape: a single, continuous gradient line tracing Stollery’s past, present, and future. It became the visual language for the whole campaign – the logo, the illustrations, the messaging. The line climbs and dips the way real life does, and it carries one simple promise: every child’s tomorrow starts with what we build today.
The Work
The line was built to be extended. Infinite by design, it could stretch to hold whatever history and whatever future the cause required, which is what turned a logo into a platform and a platform into something durable. Over more than four years it has carried campaign branding, video storytelling, web, and donor communications — through leadership transitions and shifting public sentiment — without the identity ever breaking. An identity engineered for change.
The Results
- The platform did what campaign platforms rarely survive: a change of destination. It first helped bring a proposed youth mental-health facility into mainstream public discussion, then carried the message intact through the Foundation’s pivot to a standalone children’s hospital.
- That message now anchors the $250-million Tomorrow & Today campaign it supports today.
- A relationship spanning more than four years — branding, video, web, and donor communications — held together through leadership change and shifting sentiment.
