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After working in healthcare institutions across North America for more than a decade, radiologist Dr. Khashayar Rafat Zand decided to open his own healthcare center that focused on health, wellness and preventive medicine.
His vision, known as the Institute for Specialized Medicine and Intervention (ISMI), would provide diagnostic and specialized ultrasound (breast, pediatric, musculoskeletal and vascular), pain management services, biopsy testing services as well as health assessments and preventive health services to its clients.
In 2021, he began working with HOK’s Toronto studio to transform a 4,100 square-foot office space within a corporate center into a clinic environment.
Sara Dagovic, senior project interior designer with HOK, remembers her conversations with Dr. Rafat Zand began with understanding his core business principles: care, dignity and hope – “this is really important to him”.
Dr. Rafat Zand was inspired by East Asian concepts of meditation, mindfulness, minimalism, humility and hospitality to design his clinic with warm natural colors found in traditional Japanese architecture such as wood and cloth that create an oasis of serenity and serenity.
“That is where the concept of hospitality and Zen, quiet places came from,” according to him.
With these guidelines and ideas in hand, the interior design team started designing an inviting spa-like clinic experience for patients. Additionally, they mapped how patients would progress from check-in through preparation for procedures and recovery.
Key features of the clinic would include an intimate reception and waiting area, main corridor highlighted by windows to bring natural light into staff offices and consultation spaces, and decompression lounge where patients can sit post-appointment to relax or regroup their thoughts.
As ISMI began to create its vision, its interiors team focused on developing a brand strategy through design. This included selecting soft colors, rounded shapes and edges, as well as natural materials for ISMI’s brand language.
“Our aim was to avoid anything clinical,” Dagovic recollects, recalling how the doctor’s main comment was, ‘It can’t feel cold.'”
HOK team also discussed with the doctor how best to create a branding strategy for his new venture. In turn, experience design group was brought on board to assist with developing branding collateral such as experiential graphics, wayfinding signage and wayfinding solutions for his clinic.
“With no existing branding or anything else to go off of,” Dagovic states, “this was a full-service design project to help him establish the look and feel for his space, essentially helping him craft the face that would represent it in the market place.
Bethany Foss, senior design specialist with HOK’s experience design group (Kansas City, Mo.), participated in early conversations regarding brand identity and positioning. According to Foss, her team used ISMI’s brand pillars and patient journey as the basis of all expressions of its brand identity.
The team recognized the intimate nature of the clinic’s work, including breast and prostate cancer examinations as well as procedures such as breast aspiration for abscesses and biopsies, so as a basis of design for clinical space they introduced “a supportive embrace”.
“People coming to this clinic tend to learn they have cancer or require treatments which will be particularly uncomfortable, such as surgery or chemotherapy, so the space and brand needed to reflect an awareness of the emotions associated with that experience,” Foss says.
Establishing a Healthcare Vision Statement
Next, the experience team formulated a healthcare vision statement that explained their unique approach to care. Patients would experience dignified, compassionate treatment while building trust with our clinic.
Foss notes, “we distilled all the attributes that define an ideal experience into visual cues that we could implement within the physical environment.”
Starting with the brand logo, designers envisioned an abstracted body which represents “all of humankind”, featuring maternal features and an ethereal body structure.
Foss explains: “The hand-drawn silhouette features organic lines with upward reaching arms as if reaching for a promising future,” as they reach upward in an upward position.
Sage leaves, known for their medicinal qualities, were placed as a symbol of hope and healing overhead as part of ISMI’s logo and letterform to cater to French and English-speaking patients alike.
Integrating environmental graphics in a clinic setting
After designing the logo’s silhouette, the experience team conducted studies of gestural drawings of human bodies. Their studies focused on using “hands as windows to the soul” as inspiration when developing environmental graphics for this space, according to Foss.
Dr. Rafat Zand had suggested that hands always show something about how we are feeling; anxiety or strength and confidence could all be communicated through them. Therefore, we began exploring not just body forms but also hands and their expressive potential,” says Sheelah.
Graphics depicting pairs of hands in various positions aim to underscore the intimate care services available at the clinic.
Each illustration looks hand drawn but is printed as full-length wallcoverings to complement the clinic’s paint color and create a seamless appearance. For example, illustrated hands holding tightly onto small plants decorate one wall near the reception desk. A graphic depicting two people holding hands appears in a hallway leading towards exam rooms.
Foss explains: “Putting these items in this physical space was particularly special as it provided the impression that I was holding someone’s hand as they went through treatment,” according to Foss.
Elevated clinic signage
Hand-drawn elements were an innovative solution to fulfill a code requirement in glass-enclosed staff offices. Distraction strips on solid planes of glass must meet safety guidelines; to meet this need, the project team applied a graphic of a continuous hand-drawn line across glass surfaces that eventually connects to one of our large-scale hand drawings when reaching walls.
Signs were designed specifically for clinic signage using images with the same aesthetic and thin, undulating line that represents ISMI’s logo identity and graphics.
As an illustration of this concept, a hanger denotes a changing room while for children’s waiting rooms (The “Room for Joy”) it uses an outline of two figures – parent and child together – as representation.
HOK teams collaborated on an interiors color strategy and wayfinding strategy for this project, in addition to designing its logo and graphics. According to Dagavic, initially the interiors team selected soft earthy tones including tans, greens and blue sage in order to create an inviting spa-like setting and put patients at ease.
Foss’ experience group then expanded on those colors by adding feminine hues such as blush to “emphasize the type of care people would receive here.”
Color is prominent throughout brand collateral such as business cards and promotional materials, as well as throughout the built environment such as furnishings, casework and privacy curtains in exam rooms.
Color plays an integral part in the clinic’s wayfinding strategy. Three colors have been strategically chosen as flooring colors to guide patients throughout their visit: neutral white serves as the general general color throughout, starting in the reception area.
As one walks down the main hallway, its flooring shifts to darker gray/tan in transitional areas such as when moving from hallway to exam rooms or respite spaces (sitting areas along windows or the decompression lounge at the end of corridor) marked with blue flooring.
ISMI opened its doors for business in Kirkland, Quebec in January 2022. Dr. Rafat Zand has reported that patients have responded well to all of the brand details that have been implemented during its opening month.
“People feel instantly welcome here,” he notes.
Foss attributes part of their success to the collaboration between interiors and experience design teams to “find moments of connection.”
“Creating an environment with vision and branding as part of that process creates an opportunity to tell a unified narrative,” according to Leach. “On this project we worked really hard at making sure all elements told the same tale – I believe we succeeded!”
