We never began with Figma
People imagine brand work as mood boards, references and endless screens in Figma. Our process for MEDPRESSO looked different. Strategy sessions often began with coffee: real coffee, beans from different countries, different stories. Yevhen would bring coffee to the office, and the founder would come back from trips with beans she had found abroad. We were not discussing flavour. We were searching for character.
One day someone described a coffee with a single word: dusty. Not luxurious, not trendy, dusty, like a long road through Macedonia, warm air, stone and quiet confidence. That word stayed with us. It explains why the identity has no gloss: a calm blue, a grey, an even typeface and a square with no decoration. MEDPRESSO had to feel like a trusted journal lying on the table, not like an advertisement.
We invited more than designers to these sessions. Developers, architects and project managers heard the founders speak before anyone drew a pixel, because the identity and the platform had to grow from the same understanding of the business. The hardest part of the project was not security or the database, but understanding what MEDPRESSO wanted to become before it existed. That is also where an idea came from that was in no specification: a professional forum. Doctors rarely stop after a lecture; they argue, discuss difficult clinical cases and share experience that never makes it into textbooks. Education is a conversation, and the forum became that conversation.
A page, a document and coffee
The square works on three levels. The lines are the text on a journal page, which speaks to doctors who read research every day. They are the lines of a document, which speaks to certificates, accreditation and the formal side of medical education. And they are the layers of coffee in a glass, the ritual that gave the platform its name. Each reader first sees what is closest to them, and the mark needs no explanation to work.
The lines are of different lengths. Their broken rhythm makes the square look like real text rather than a menu icon.
Trust before traffic
The restraint of the identity grew from a lesson we learned before MEDPRESSO existed. Once we published a medical article written for search engines. Technically it was good. The founder calmly explained why it had to come down: a doctor could read it and be misled. After that conversation we stopped writing for algorithms and started writing for people, especially for professionals whose knowledge carries responsibility.
The same principle went into the brand. A platform for doctors does not need a mark that promises more than it gives. It needs a mark that looks like a well-set page of a scientific journal: clear, calm, nothing extra. And the mark had to carry a product built from the first day with room for the future: personal accounts, certification across several countries, educational events and video lectures. When COVID came and online education for doctors became a necessity almost overnight, the system was already ready for it.
Why blue
Blue is the colour of medicine, and for a platform built for doctors that matters: trust comes before everything. But here it is also a reference to the colours of the project MEDPRESSO grew out of. Before MEDPRESSO there was a diagnostic centre we had worked with since 2017, starting with a website redesign and then a blog written by its doctors. The educational content we built with them became the seed of the platform, and the blue keeps that origin. The story of that first partnership is told in Some Clients Change Your Business. MDC LUX Changed Ours.
In the wordmark MED is set in blue and PRESSO in grey. The two halves of the name read apart and together: first medicine and press, then the espresso hidden inside.
How the identity lives
The mark is embroidered small on a white doctor's coat, printed on blue and white business cards, pressed with a wooden stamp and debossed into heavy paper. Its square shape suits the places a platform needs: a browser tab, an app icon, the corner of a certificate. For the MEDPRESSO platform itself we were responsible for everything from the UX strategy to the interface design and the design system, so the identity and the product grew as one system.
The world first saw MEDPRESSO in 2020. Today it is a continuing medical education platform in four languages, with about ten thousand pages of scientific and educational content, a professional forum nobody asked for that became one of the most important ideas of the project, and thousands of doctors who keep learning there. The project is expanding and needs investment for its next stage, and we are working on that together with the team. The whole story of the platform, from the first coffee to today, is in The Story We Never Planned to Tell. Our approach to identity is on the brand identity service page.
