The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) is one of the oldest and most respected medical institutions on the island of Ireland, responsible for postgraduate specialist training across a broad range of medical disciplines. With a history stretching back to 1654, the organisation sits at the intersection of clinical excellence, academic rigour, and public health leadership.
RCPI had grown over time into an organisation with a complex brand architecture: a parent brand and multiple faculty brands, each with their own distinct identity, audience, and purpose. The challenge was not simply a visual refresh. It was a structural brand problem: how do you create a coherent, professional identity system that allows each faculty to have its own voice and visual character, while still sitting clearly under the RCPI umbrella?
The work had to be trusted by a professional audience that included senior clinicians, academic leaders, and healthcare policymakers. It also had to work across a wide range of applications, from formal stationery and strategic publications through to event materials and digital platforms.
Gone Rogue developed a comprehensive brand architecture for RCPI that defined the relationship between the parent brand and its six faculty brands. Each faculty received a distinct crest and colour identity that drew visual coherence from the parent brand while communicating their individual specialisms, from obstetrics and gynaecology to occupational medicine and pathology.
The parent brand identity was sharpened and systemised across all applications: a full stationery suite, letterheads, business cards, and formal documentation templates. Postgraduate training publications were redesigned to reflect the institution's status, with the ‘Postgraduate Specialist Training Opportunities’ series serving as a flagship recruitment tool for specialist trainees.
Beyond the visual identity, Gone Rogue also supported the strategic communications programme, producing materials for RCPI's Strategic Plan and public health campaigns, including ‘The Race We Don't Want to Win’, a publication addressing Ireland's obesity epidemic.
The result: a brand system that brought structural clarity to a complex institution without flattening its internal diversity. RCPI's communications now present a unified, professional face to the medical community, prospective trainees, and the public, while giving each faculty the identity flexibility it needs to serve its own audience. The work demonstrates Gone Rogue's ability to manage brand complexity at an institutional level, navigating multiple stakeholders and applying rigorous visual thinking to a brief that went well beyond aesthetics.
