UTAK Custom QC Brochures
UTAK creates custom controls (urine, blood, and serum) used for drug testing in forensic labs. Over several years their lab control brochures had been designed by a variety of vendors which produced an inconsistent look across the family of brochures and none of them had been updated with the redesigned UTAK brand.
The existing UTAK brochures were a mishmash of styles and formats
The Challenge
Provide a fresh look & feel for the brochures and incorporate the new UTAK brand.
Condense the high volume of data contained within each control brochure into a manageable format that is easy to scan and easy to read.
Create a family of brochures that UTAK’s sales representatives and their lab clients can quickly distinguish from each other, while maintaining a branded look.
The Solution
A standard letter format would make the brochures easy to mail and easy to place into a binder or folder. A mid-weight cover stock would help the smaller 2-page brochures feel substantial in the hand and still accommodate the larger multi-page brochures without making them too bulky.
I designed a 16-column layout that would provide plenty of flexibility for both the marketing copy and the multiple columns of control data.
Each major control category would be color-coded:
blood (red)
serum = (blue)
urine = (yellow)
Brochures that contained multiple controls would be gray and a color bar across the top of the cover would identify each brochure when they were placed in display racks at conferences.
The visual design would be simple. A large curve, inspired by the rounded letterforms in the UTAK logo, served as a unique visual element as well as a frame for the duotoned cover images.
I chose Nimbus Sans typeface for its wide range of weights (including a condensed) and legibility at small sizes — perfect for the control data. I paired Nimbus Sans with the distinctive Azo Sans typeface for headlines.
“Justin is an incredibly talented designer, and we are a better company for his involvement. He provided recommendations for best practices and that expert opinion helped guide us.”
Once I established my design system of page layout, fonts, colors and imagery the brochures were fairly straight forward and easy to produce, with only a couple of outliers that required additional design consideration.
While making the brochures aesthetically pleasing played a role, a design system was the primary focus in redesigning the UTAK brochures — one that could easily be applied to sell sheets, presentation decks and web pages — ensuring consistency across multiple marketing channels.
