Background
The Lifetime Way is an internal employee recognition program at Excellus BlueCross BlueShield and the Lifetime Healthcare Companies. A point of pride for the company, the mark accompanying any acknowledgments of employee excellence should match the reverence that Excellus BCBS has for those employees.
The Challenge & Old Mark
The Excellus BlueCross BlueShield Creative Resource Group design team received a request from our internal brand team to refresh the mark, which had been in use for many years. The new mark should also be unifiable with the Lifetime Way Behaviors icons created more recently in 2022. Neither the old mark nor the new icons were created by me.
The old mark (above), new icons (right)
The New Mark
Each member of the design team put forth concepts for consideration. My concept was chosen by the brand team and I developed the design further under the guidance of my team's art director. Through a long process of collaboration and refinement, we arrived at the final primary and secondary marks.
The primary mark represents the program as whole, while the secondary marks highlight the different areas of focus in the Lifetime Way culture. The rings and colors in the new mark correlate to the circles in the existing icons, effectively marrying the marks and icons into a system.
The Usage Guide
Alongside the new marks, we worked closely with the brand team and human resources department to develop a mark usage guidelines document to address as many questions and issues as possible before they become questions or issues. This is a living document and will be updated as the need arises.
