LeAnn Locher & Associates

03/04/2021

I tell my clients there are many ways to tell the stories of their work. Long form, short form, metrics, impact...a few examples. Gathering and collecting them is work, albeit joyful and rewarding. But you don’t need to tell them in only one way. Here’s an example of a story told in multiple ways by Community Action Hillsboro, Oregon: longer form narrative in a newsletter, highlight form in the annual report, and even short form in a heart-felt animation shared with donors as a thank you. Don’t be afraid to tell your stories multiple times in multiple formats to different segments of your audiences. While they’re stories you may know so well that you have them memorized, they’re most often new every time you share them differently. Fresh ways to use hard-earned content.
To see the longer form version of this story created in the annual report, head to my website: http://www.leannlocher.com/maximizing-your-stories/

01/04/2021

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have a long history of gathering leading thinkers to share the latest research and information on health equity. In the summer of 2020, they launched a communications campaign centering the impacts of COVID-19 on communities of color, and featuring conversations with experts on a variety of topics related to minority health and COVID-19, as well as information and resources from the National Academies on topics related to health equity. LeAnn Locher & Associates provided campaign branding for the videos, web and social media graphics, designing a unified and bold look to carry across platforms and to communicate at-a-glance COVID and its impact on communities of color. This eight-week campaign provided trusted voices and messages across multiple platforms during a time when the nation needed it the most. See more examples of the campaign on our website. http://www.leannlocher.com/communicating-the-impacts-of-covid-on-communities-of-color/

09/01/2020

This week our client is launching a social media campaign with assets we've designed and created: COVID has hit communities of color hard, and it's a conversation we need to have. Proud the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are elevating this discussion.

08/16/2020

Decimal is that beautiful typeface.

And the second best news is getting to see the logo I created for the ticket, a collaboration with Senior Creative Advisor to the campaign Robyn Kanner, which evolves the earlier mark by Aimee Brodbeck at Mekanism. What a wonderful and uplifting announcement this piece of typography gets to accompan...

07/28/2020

We recently produced a series of short social media video promotions for the Board on Children, Youth, and Families at the National Academies of Sciences, Health and Medicine. These videos are in support of the release of the study Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, and Choice.

"The delivery of high quality and equitable care for both mothers and newborns is complex and requires efforts across many sectors. The United States spends more on childbirth than any other country in the world, yet outcomes are worse than other high-resource countries, and even worse for Black and Native American women. There are a variety of factors that influence childbirth, including social determinants such as income, educational levels, access to care, financing, transportation, structural racism and geographic variability in birth settings. It is important to reevaluate the United States' approach to maternal and newborn care through the lens of these factors across multiple disciplines."

Read more and see all four videos produced for this landmark study.
http://www.leannlocher.com/videos-as-a-tool-for-communicating-top-level-healthcare-messages/

Learn more from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

07/28/2020

We recently produced a series of short social media video promotions for the Board on Children, Youth, and Families at the National Academies of Sciences, Health and Medicine. These videos are in support of the release of the study Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, and Choice.
"The delivery of high quality and equitable care for both mothers and newborns is complex and requires efforts across many sectors. The United States spends more on childbirth than any other country in the world, yet outcomes are worse than other high-resource countries, and even worse for Black and Native American women. There are a variety of factors that influence childbirth, including social determinants such as income, educational levels, access to care, financing, transportation, structural racism and geographic variability in birth settings. It is important to reevaluate the United States' approach to maternal and newborn care through the lens of these factors across multiple disciplines."

Read more and see all four videos produced for this landmark study.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/assessing-health-outcomes-by-birth-settings

07/09/2020

It's been interesting watch people argue about the term "defund the police" instead of actually talking about the problem at hand. But words do matter, and this is a good quick take on conventional framing versus new and explosive framing.
https://cfmadvocates.com/framing-an-issue-seeks-to-galvanize-opinion-and-action/

06/03/2020

“Structural racism is more harmful to the health and wellbeing of children than infectious diseases”-Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society

PIDS - Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society

05/27/2020

Four years ago I was tasked by the Global Board of Health at The National Academies of Sciences to design a template for ongoing workshop reports from the Forum on Microbial Threats. As part of the design process, and reflected in the final design, I mapped what a pandemic looks like, how it travels and how it grows. Simple dots and lines easily demonstrate infectious disease. The forum continues to release reports, all using this initial design, swapping out different colors for different content (some “flexing” in the type styling but I’m giving them a pass on that: they’ve generally stuck to the original design). Yesterday a new report in the series was released, and I reflected on the original design for a bit. When I originally designed this, the amount of red lines and dots seemed like a lot. But now that I’m living in an actual global pandemic, I think of all of the maps of COVID-19 and the many, many dots and lines that cover the globe representing its path of destruction. It’s mind boggling. Visual data is so helpful in understanding the crisis we’re in....

05/23/2020

Design communicates differently.

05/20/2020

Recognizing fear as a real player in the room for effective messaging is vitally important, according to this study. Great information here on how to effectively move and engage people on health care issues.
“When considering prevention behaviors, the ‘why’ is attractive because the outcome of illness-prevention is pleasant and desirable. With detection, the ‘why’ is scary,” Achar says. This makes sense, she adds, because it’s a lot more pleasant to focus your attention on staying healthy than it is to think about being diagnosed with an illness.

The key? Understanding how fear and confidence shape healthy choices.

05/18/2020

Hey there, whatcha been doin'? Here's a "behind the scenes of my work" story for you, pandemic edition! Developing and launching a brand can be intense: a lot of hours, deep research, often testing. But let’s say we cut the timeframe down to 3 weeks and throw in a global pandemic? Now that’s intense. But I couldn’t say no to this project: such great fun, and, I know the topic: I trained as a classical pianist from age 4-18. Combine that with a creative and engaged client, and we were about to create some magic.

Virtuosity.online was launched during “the great pause” of 2020. As we all stayed at home, music students were foregoing classes with their teachers, recitals, and performances. Client Kevin A. Lefohn had already been using online conferencing software to connect to his students prior to the pandemic, but now any barriers that may have existed in the industry fell away and he was perfectly poised to step into a great need.

Designed not to replace lessons with instructors, Virtuosity.online classes are for students of all levels who want to up their game, explore their creativity, learn new ways of learning, and connect with other students and teachers from around the world. Designing this brand meant instilling a fresh modernity to a classic arena, centering the joy of students and their instruments, with a very strong, professional foundation reflected in the tenor of the instructors.

The Virtuosity.online logo is the fermata, the musical symbol for pause. It brings wonderful meaning for the launch story (e.g. the great pause during the COVID pandemic) and over a longer time, connects to a theme of pause in classical training practice to grow curiosity and to think differently.

During this short time (3 weeks!) we developed the brand platform and all lead messaging, creative thematic, logo, website, and social media campaign. Let’s just say that during a global pandemic, I was not just baking bread and watching Netflix. Not that there's anything wrong with those things.