CHRIS JOHNSON
communications specialist
THE BUSINESS CARD
The story of seven years of design evolution told thr0ugh business cards.
Since 2017, I have worked for the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network, working to change the image from small hometown nonprofit to nationally-recognized thought leader, while acknowledging the reality that the work we do is very much one-on-one, in neighborhoods and communities, and the focus there is never on "the brand." The focus is always the people, and the mutuality we establish to support people in their recovery from mental health concerns.
Sherry Jenkins Tucker was not a founder of GMHCN, but she did grow it from a staff of four to over 100 employees over the course of 17 years. During that time she helped to transform the mental health recovery movement, winning the highest national awards for public service in mental health. Even in death, the awards have continued (several created in her honor). None of this remarkable achievement, or the identity of the organization itself, was reflected in the brand. The business card I inherited looked as though it was made in Word 20 years ago because it was.
GMHCN: 1990s-2018
As Told through Business Cards
The vertical green bar on the business card is probably--in the end--why I accepted the job offer. It is more than that it was my favorite color (harlequin green), it was the very bold use of it. Green is the color of mental health awareness, but not this green. This green says "we want you to be aware that we are something different." And so we were.
2018-2020
Cautionary Exploration
Sherry was one of the most remarkably change-averse business leaders I have ever had the privilege of working with, and with good reason. Only she really understood the careful calibration it took to keep the Network running. We faced the same challenges as most nonprofits, but with staff scattered throughout correctional facilities, state mental health lockdown wards, and five 24-hour respite centers around the state, we had hairpin turns built into every hour of every day.
Sherry knew that something as innocent-seaming as a new logo or business card might-at the wrong time or presented in the wrong way--be perceived in some unhelpful way in a company as fixated as honoring tradition as we sometimes were. So we waited, and considered. And waited, and considered. The website redesign, which I had completed by week three on the job, took Sherry a full six months to approve to go live, though there were only a few minor grammar & technical things to mend among the 70-odd pages. Interestingly, we did not release the new logo until some months after the website launch. I did not put the old logo on the new website, so for some time our public-facing brand had a generic sans serif font where a proper graophic should have been.
2019-2022
In lieu of a raise, please kindly accept your choice of business card color...
Our budget challenges with our primary funder (the State of Georgia) made it abundantly clear that while public sentiment supporting mental health was widespread (including at the Capitol), that did not immediately translate into dollars. And so, we began to create small opportunities to let the staff know that we really did care about them.
Providing small opportunities like this to express both "choice and voice" really do matter in an organization where self-determination is a foundation of the work being done, and which we advocate for wherever we go. The only thing it really cost us was my time, which, while in short supply, was still more plentiful than cash.
2021-2022
Offshoots sprout new cards.
In 2021, we were faced with a bit of a puzzle--how to visually communicate that a new organization we were hoping to one day be a standalone nonprofit supporting mental health policy initiatives at the state and national level. The Georgia Peer Policy Collective, as it was called, was still very much an in-house initiative.
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We were similarly challenged in creating a visual identity for the Behavioral Heatlh Planning and Advisory Council, a federally-mandated advisory group each state is required to embody (but which do not have a standard name or any unifying body to give them a handy logo or image). GMHCN was at the organization handling administrative duties for the Council, and so needed a way to identify them shorthand as being a part of us, yet separate.
These served as the first opportunities for discussion around moving away from the color-saturated cards we had grown so accustomed to, and moving towards something at least slightly more nuanced, clean, and professional, but that would still communicate that life at GMHCN is just a little different than most places.
2022-2023
In search of the New Classic Coke Zero
The July 11, 2023 death of GMHCN executive director Sherry Jenkins Tucker, emphasized that difference in many ways--not least by me being named Interim Executive Director, a title I would wear, along with my Director of Communications title, for 18 months (about 15 months longer than I imagined, and 18 months longer than anyone planned for).
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Becoming much more deeply familiar with the org chart and the meanings and feelings of the many groups, departments, teams, etc, gave me an entirely different take on what our visual ID might need to be, and a two-year exploration was begun.
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Most of these never made it into production, as I held off on a major update until the new org leader could provide input.
Despite the general "all are equal here" mist pumped into the air at many nonprofits (including GMHCN), that has its limits and business cards is one of those. I honor the arguments for digital cards, but when I have two minutes of a Senator's time, I don't want to spend it explaining QR codes.
2022-2024
The Classic Coke.... with a Twist! variations
2022-2024
We Got the Beat - The Rock and Roll Variations
2022-2024
Head Over Heels - The Big Color Variations
2022-2024
Dealer's Choice
Knowing how wildly impractical these cards would be did not stop them from being my favorite. I never did or probably would have championed them for widespread usage. But!
Something about the contrast, the tension, the very awkwardness of it makes it perfectly me (if not perfectly suitable for the other 100 employees).
