La mode s’engage / Protège ton soignant campaign

In spring 2020, amidst the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, a group of entrepreneurs and actors of French tech decided to launch the initiative Protège ton soignant (“Protect your healthcare worker”). As the public care services were overwhelmed with the amount of patients and were lacking medical devices, Protège ton Soignant started a fundraising campaign that led to the purchase of respirators, masks, and other resources that were in urgent demand at the time.

La Mode s’engage was part of this movement: in order to raise funds, various luxury fashion brands donated some of their apparel for a unique auction which took place from the 1st to the 4th of May 2020. Each of the pieces had to match the signature blue color of the event, creating a unity not only through the graphic identity but also through the products themselves. The simplicity of the design correlates to the emergency of the medical needs and to the directness of the communication: social media only, plus a website.

The designers Yorgo Tloupas, who worked on the identity of Protège ton Soignant, and Louna Humbert, who adapted it for La Mode s’engage, used Bureau Brut’s Dr, available from Production Type. The specificity of Dr is that it was initially designed as a custom typeface for a medical equipment brand specialized in prosthetics: the design of this geometric sans keeps this idea in mind, with parts of some letters that seem artificially combined, particularly in lowercase letters. However, the logotype of La Mode s’engage keeps a softness due to the use of capital letters and the smooth shape of interlacing semi-circles. Associated to the RGB Blue, this made the posts immediately recognizable on social media such as Instagram, where most of the communication took place.

In the end, the four days of auction were a success: La Mode s’engage managed to raise €131,464 for the benefit of healthcare workers.