Opinion BY Armin

Double Crossed

Established as early as 1871 with a 25-bed hospital by the Sisters of Mercy in St. Louis and slowly and loosely expanding into Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas, Mercy Health System is now a network of 28 hospitals, with more than 40,000 employees, treating nearly 2.7 million patients each year. As the network has expanded over the years, each facility has created its own logo, failing to establish any connection within the larger system despite being known as one of the better wired health networks. Earlier in August, Mercy introduced a new logo that will be adopted by all of its hospitals and they will all be known simply as Mercy.

Mercy’s symbol is a contemporary version of the original cross which Catherine McAuley, founder of the Sisters of Mercy, adopted for her ministry. The outer extensions of the cross represent a ministry that is diverse but aligned around a common purpose, forming a cross-within-a-cross. For Catherine, the inner cross was a reminder that we should dedicate ourselves to the work God has given us, take up our own cross and serve with a deep reverence for others.
— Press Release

The opening image shows only a fraction of the various Mercy logos out there — an image search for “Mercy Hospital Logo” yields an even scarier field — most of them using some variation of the cross-within-a-cross. Also, most of them had pretty bad typography. The new logo sort of improves on both aspects. The new icon has an offset cross, just like the one we saw recently with Cru, that helps give it some movement. Each section of the cross overlaps at its corner, creating darker dots, which look rather odd and unnecessary. The thin cross within that colorful cross gives the icon a certain edge, and I bet the logo would look better in single color and without the overlap. The wordmark comes in a flavorless sans serif and features a sliced “c” to match the angle of the “y”, making the “c” look tilted; luckily, it’s not too distracting. Overall, this is a decent upgrade, especially considering all the disparate things it was building on.

Thanks to Jonathan McCoy for the tip.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners