Tidewell Health: a brand that puts patients at ease
This is a self-initiated concept project — not a real client engagement — created to show how we approach this kind of work. It gives a growing clinic network a warmer identity and an accessible, bookings-first website — designed so more people can find care and actually complete the first step.
Project type
Self-initiated concept
Industry
Healthcare & patient services.
Services
Brand identity, accessibility, website design, booking UX.
Timeline
20 weeks, from brand strategy through accessibility audit and launch.
The challenge
Tidewell had grown from a single practice into nine clinics, but its brand had never caught up. Each location had drifted into its own logo, colours and tone, and the website felt clinical in the coldest sense — grey forms, dense paragraphs and a booking flow that quietly excluded anyone using a screen reader or an older phone.
For a healthcare provider, that is not a cosmetic issue. Patients were phoning reception because they could not complete an online booking, no-show rates were high, and an accessibility review had flagged real legal and ethical risk. Tidewell needed to feel like one trustworthy organisation and to be usable by everyone it served.
The approach
For a real engagement, we'd run brand and accessibility as one project, not two, because trust in healthcare is built from both feelings and function. Interviews with patients and front-desk staff would shape a warmer identity and a booking experience designed against WCAG from the first wireframe.
- ◆A unified, human identity. One calm tidal-inspired palette, a friendly wordmark and photography of real care in place of nine inconsistent looks.
- ◆Accessibility as a design constraint. Colour contrast, focus states, semantic structure and keyboard flows engineered to AA, reaching AAA on core text.
- ◆A bookings-first architecture. "Book an appointment" is never more than a tap away, in plain language and multiple entry points.
- ◆Plain-language content. Clinical copy rewritten so patients understand services without a medical dictionary.
Care that anyone can reach
The new Tidewell brand feels reassuring the moment a page loads — soft tidal blues, generous type and photography of actual clinicians and patients. Every clinic shares one visual system, so a patient recognises Tidewell whether they arrive by search, referral or the front door.
The redesigned booking flow works flawlessly with a keyboard and screen reader, confirms appointments in plain language, and offers reminders designed to cut no-shows. An accessibility statement and ongoing audit process are built in to keep the standard from slipping after launch.
The outcomes this concept targets
"Make Tidewell look and feel like one practice that every patient can use — treat accessibility as the point, not a checkbox."
— The brief this concept set out to answer
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Let's make care accessible
If your organisation needs a brand people trust and a site everyone can use, that's exactly the work we love. Let's talk.