So the new mark grew out of the old one instead of replacing it. We took that fingerprint and simplified it, stage by stage, until it became a soft little rounded shape. We’ve been calling it the pebble. The whole journey from fingerprint to finished icon is in the brand foundations if you want to watch it happen.

The icon is a ring of those pebbles, each one a different tone, sitting together in a circle. They were a society, after all, a group of people with one thing in common, and a circle of people says that far better than some clever standalone symbol ever would.

The pebble didn’t stay still either: It’s the shape we frame all the photography in across the site, which instantly warms up whatever image you drop inside it, and it’s wandered off into the real world too. The Eczema UK running vests for the London Marathon used it this year which was great to see.

One last small thing I’m fond of and wanted to share. For the first year there’s a version of the logo with formerly National Eczema Society tucked underneath, so the people who’ve known them for years don’t feel like they’ve lost them overnight. Rebrands can be quietly upsetting if you’ve been loyal to something, so that little line can help take the sting out.

Colours that start with skin

I really didn’t want this to feel like a leaflet you’d find in a waiting room, so the colour had to do some heavy lifting and it starts with skin.

The core palette runs all the way from porcelain and ivory down to ebony and black. That’s deliberate. Eczema doesn’t care what colour you are or whether you’re a man or a woman, it affects anyone, and the palette is there to say so out loud. It celebrates skin instead of tiptoeing around it.

Then there are two brighter ones. Terracotta, a very warm colour and partly because it’s porous, it felt right when considering the skin. And a blue we nicknamed Maya, after the old Mayan pigment, this vivid blue that’s also famously almost impossible to fade or wear down. That last bit is really why it’s in there. It’s the resilience for people living with this who just get on with it, and I wanted a colour that did the same.

Type that stays out of the way

Type matters more than people tend to think on a site like this, because the words have to be accurate and clear, and they have to look it too. The headlines are set in Fragment Glare, a serif that’s smart and a touch elegant but has softer details that stop it feeling stiff or overly corporate. Everything you actually sit and read is in Lausanne, which helps the wording be legible at whatever size it’s set at. Between them, the charity can come across as expert and still read like a person wrote it.

People, not symptoms

This is the bit I care about most, so forgive me if I go on. Everywhere you look, eczema gets photographed cold and clinical and when researching for the brand it’s something I noticed everywhere, skin at its angriest, the actual human cropped out of the frame. And we all know someone with eczema. Eczema can be debilitating for some, it can be sore and frustrating for many more,, but it should never stop one from living their life to the fullest.

So the photography goes the other way entirely. Real people, warmth, light, eczema on a face or an arm where you can see it, shot more like a beauty campaign than anything medical. It’s part of them, not the headline.

The rebrand that started with skin