SAFE MOTHERHOOD
Safe Motherhood is a project run by the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust. The aim of the Safe Motherhood Research Programme is to improve maternity outcomes in Malawi and Zambia by improving the quality of care. MLWT engaged the collective to create a brand that evokes feelings of safety and nurturing as well as illustrating that the project is a system put in place for mothers. We decided to use warm colours for the colour palette and develop a series of stock images representing African motherhood in a warm and nurturing light. We also worked with Mawa Creative Agency to bring these ideas to life on a website.
Services: Logo Design, Slide Deck Design, Photography, Web Design
The Brief
In 2023 Wona was contracted by the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust to be their communications partner on their:
• Safe Motherhood Programme
• Maternal Death Report
• Health Needs Policy Brief
The Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust (MLWT) envisions science driving health and wellbeing in Malawi, in that vein they conduct high quality research to improve health and train the next generation of researchers. Safe Motherhood, run by the MLWT, is a research programme with the aim of improving maternal and neonatal health (MNH) outcomes in low resource settings and building the next generation of MNH researchers. Approximately 820 women die daily from preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Alarmingly, 94% of these maternal deaths occur in low resource settings like the ones Safe Motherhood is targeting in Malawi and Zambia. MLWT wanted us to create a brand for Safe Motherhood that would be cognizant of the sensitive nature of the work and allow for more widespread knowledge of the work that Safe Motherhood is doing.
Goals
We aimed to design a brand that honoured and reflected the local context, depicting the experiences of Malawian and Zambian mothers truthfully. We envisioned a brand that evoked feelings of safety and nurturing to reflect how the Safe Motherhood program emphasises quality of care for all women.
The Products and the Process
Our process for this project started with multiple consultations with the Safe Motherhood teams to determine their vision for the Safe Motherhood Programme and how they would like that represented. This project was also our first opportunity to work with our web design partner, Mawa Creative Agency, on the development of the Safe Motherhood website. After consultations, we developed a design brief that outlined our plans for the communications materials. The design brief informed the development of the following products:
- The Safe Motherhood logo
- Comprehensive Branding Guidelines with:
- Colour palette of warm colours
- Communications materials templates
- Slide deck design
- A set of stock photographs produced after a photoshoot with
Malawian women and their children. The photos produced
portray African motherhood in a warm and nurturing light - The Safe Motherhood Website
The creation of the Safe Motherhood brand informed the creation of other MLWT communications materials, namely their Maternal
Death Report and their Health Policy Needs Brief. Creating the Safe Motherhood brand made it easier for us to create sub brands that spoke to it.