When I saw the news that Optimum Healthcare IT had redesigned their logo, I had to reach out to Larry Kaiser, Chief Marketing Officer at Optimum and 2020 HITMC Marketing Person of the Year, to understand more about what prompted the new logo. Kaiser, along with colleague Ian Jamison, Creatie Director at Optimum, were happy to share their experience.
Tell us a little bit about Optimum Healthcare IT.
Larry Kaiser and Ian Jamison: Optimum Healthcare IT is a Best in KLAS healthcare IT staffing and consulting services firm based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Working with healthcare providers, payers, software, and life sciences organizations, Optimum provides professional staffing and consulting services that support our client’s needs through the continuum of care. Optimum’s comprehensive service offerings include EHR, Technical, Security, ServiceNow®, ERP, and our talent and skill development program, Optimum CareerPath®.
You’re celebrating a 10 year anniversary for the company, is that what prompted the new company logo, or what factors pushed you to create a new logo?
Larry Kaiser: In a way, yes. Since I joined the organization back in 2016, every aspect of the company’s public-facing image had been updated, except the logo. Over the last six years, we have built a lot of brand equity, so changing the logo comes with some risk. I viewed this milestone as the best opportunity to update the logo and make it more modern and reflective of today’s company.
In 2021, we debuted the Optimum CareerPath Training Program logo, and when that one sat next to the primary company logo, the company logo looked dated. Finally, Optimum has gone through great growth and has expanded our service offerings. That also played a factor in this timing.
What do you think are poor reasons to do a logo refresh?
Larry Kaiser: I think there are several reasons that I would consider not good ones when considering a logo refresh. First, if you are going through this exercise and determine that your current logo visually fits your current brand design, there is no reason to update. Second, if your logo represents your company well and serves who you are, you’re good. Finally, if your current logo works across all of your channels, there is no need to change it.
Changing a logo is a big deal. What were some of the big changes you had to deal with once you changed the logo? Were there some things you had to change that surprised you?
Larry Kaiser: Changing a logo is definitely not a simple undertaking. As I mentioned above, we have built a lot of brand equity over the last six years. In the healthcare IT market, people know the infinity symbol as being associated with Optimum Healthcare IT, so we knew that we could not eliminate that.
The main goal was to modernize the look while remaining true to our longstanding reputation and history.
The hardest part of this project was the tagline. The marketing department spent a lot of time brainstorming some excellent ideas. We came up with many that we liked but kept running into trademark issues that prevented us from using them. Some of the ideas were trademarked by companies that no longer exist, but we still could not use them. In the end, we stuck with the existing tagline, but we updated the fonts.
Since the rollout, we are still identifying areas to update. We built out a very comprehensive list, but in the end, it was next to impossible to locate all of the updates that needed to be completed.
What was your process for developing a new logo? Any things you wished you’d done differently?
Ian Jamison: My process for developing any logo – creating new or refreshing old – always starts with market research. What kind of research? It depends, but this is the baseline: when researching, look to design trends – colors, patterns, textures, positioning, scale, fonts (bold/light/italic/blocky/thin) – start with the organization’s industry and then grow that across all industries.
Pay attention! This is where you pick up subtle design principles happening. You might observe backgrounds at work and how they interact with the copy and/or its positioning. You might notice a structure to colors, iconography, accent shapes, fonts, and more. Once familiarized with trends and brand cohesion, you creatively apply your findings to the project at hand.
When creating or revamping the actual logo, take into consideration the history. At all costs, try and retain a brand’s signature; unless the goal is to reface entirely. Brand signature? Yup! Brand signature items include company colors, fonts, props (symbols/icons/mascots/animals/ shapes, and more). Once the signature is locked in, for our case, it’s the longstanding reputation of the infinity symbol with Optimum Healthcare IT and the industry. That infinity is a staple and must be present, so that was the starting block with that knowledge.
As far as my process and whether I would change how we applied it to the refreshed Optimum Healthcare IT brand, I would not change it. This process is comprehensive and typically generates good results that resonate well across the intended audience.
Is there a story behind the logo? Were there key things you wanted to be sure your logo communicated?
Ian Jamison: The story behind the logo is the reputation it holds within the industry. Still, the symbolism within the logo is Optimum’s dedication to forever evolve alongside our clients, which is akin to the infinity and the concept of continual evolution. One of the driving aspects of the design was the prompt to modernize the logo – bringing the feel of dimension and reflecting back to our services’ diverse range. We achieved this by adding breaks throughout the infinity prop to imply our ability to remain agile with our client and partner visions.
Finally – the colors, fonts, and positioning. BOLD + CLEAR was the direction. We altered the old stacked “Optimum Healthcare IT” overtop the infinity prop logo to clean up the legibility of the brand. The signature Optimum orange and blue colors came into play to retire the faded blue gradient from the past, and the new design not only adds a modern touch but also lends itself to multiple uses for vertical and horizontal positioning – again tieing the design to the diverse agility of the Optimum Healthcare IT brand + services.
Overall, we are confident that the brand stands stronger than ever amongst the many brands of the world. Cheers to the past 10 years of Optimum, and salute to the next infinity.
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