Unifying two brands in one bold home
Brand
Strategy
Website Design
Website Development
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers on the planet. But PCNA's message was diluted across two brands and two websites. We unified them into one uncompromising home that treats the stakes with the seriousness they deserve.
The Problem
Pancreatic Cancer North America and Pancreatic Cancer Canada had been running as separate organizations with separate digital presences — scattered content, duplicated pages, and a softened message that didn't match the disease's mortality rate. Patients, caregivers, and donors couldn't find what they needed. The rebrand demanded a website that matched its stakes: bold, direct, unified, and impossible to mistake for any other cancer cause.
Our Approach
We treated the site as the primary vehicle for the rebrand — not a visual refresh on top of existing content, but a full rebuild of what PCNA says and how it says it.
The brand direction pushed against category convention. Where most health charities lean on hope and survivor stories, we pulled PCNA's visual language toward the seriousness of the disease — darker imagery, more dramatic colour, a tone of voice that is caring and empathetic but never softens the mortality of pancreatic cancer.
On the site itself, we mapped user journeys for patients, caregivers, and donors, then rebuilt the information architecture around those journeys instead of the org chart. Redundant pages were consolidated, critical resources promoted, and the design system was calibrated to stay flexible while the external brand strategy evolved in parallel.
Deliverables
Everything the team needed to launch and keep shipping after we handed off:
- User personas for patients, caregivers, and donors
- Consolidated information architecture merging the two legacy sites
- Refreshed brand colour system and imagery direction
- Tone of voice guidelines for patient-facing and donor-facing content
- Design system built for ongoing editorial work
Results
PCNA launched with a unified home that treats the stakes of the disease with the seriousness they deserve — and, internally, gave the team a single platform they can actually maintain. The brand that came out of the rebuild is now rolling out across PCNA's other channels, and the site continues to expand as the content team picks up the design system.
What's next
The rebrand is rolling out across all of PCNA's platforms, and the website is the anchor for everything that follows — campaigns, donor journeys, patient resources. Our work together continues through brand guidelines and expanded content.
