Sean W. Grimes

Two brands, one fight

The Foundation needed to stay institutional enough for major donors and research partners. Many vs Cancer had to feel like something you'd join, not something you'd donate to. Both had to read as one organization. The answer was shared DNA and deliberately divergent expression.

Role
Art-directed the agency through the identity, then built the system around it, produced the applications, and governed both brands
Year
2016–17; initiative discontinued in 2019
Scope
Brand architecture, co-brand system, guidelines, collateral, web, merchandise
Organization
Prostate Cancer Foundation and its grassroots fundraising initiative
The Prostate Cancer Foundation mark and the Many vs Cancer mark side by side, joined beneath a rule reading Curing Together.
The co-brand lockup. Two marks, one promise, no hierarchy.

Two audiences, two registers

The Foundation speaks to major donors, researchers, and institutional partners. Its job is credibility: this is where serious money goes to do serious science. Many vs Cancer had an entirely different job. It was built for individuals raising money among their own friends and families — participatory, energetic, personal.

Run those two jobs through one identity and you get a brand that does neither well. Run them through two unrelated identities and you dilute both, and the sister brand loses the credibility it needs to be trusted with someone's donation.

Order and motion

The Foundation's mark was built on interlocking ribbon forms — precise, symmetrical, structural. It reads as science at rest.

Many vs Cancer took the same geometry and set it moving. A banner skewed off its baseline, zigzag edges, condensed bold caps, orange arrowheads converging on the VS. It behaves like a rally placard or a team nameplate rather than a letterhead.

The connective tissue is more specific than a shared aesthetic. The MvC banner shape derives from the Foundation's double helix, putting the "versus" at the core of the most powerful scientific tool available — the human genome. The sister brand isn't a stylistic cousin. It's built from the parent's structural idea.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation mark: an interlocking blue ribbon beside the organization name. The Many vs Cancer mark: a skewed banner reading MANY VS CANCER in condensed navy capitals with orange accents.
The same geometry, at rest and in motion.

One brand had to be trusted with a seven-figure gift. The other had to be worn on a t-shirt.

Inverting the palette

The two brands share a palette. What separates them is proportion. PCF leads with blue and uses orange as an accent. MvC inverts it — orange dominant, with teal added to carry the energy further and to build hierarchy where orange alone would overwhelm a page.

That inversion does most of the differentiation work, and it's why the two never look like a color-swapped copy of each other. Same ingredients, opposite recipe.

Guideline page showing the Many vs Cancer palette as an extension of the PCF core palette, with teal, black and medium blue added.
The MvC palette documented as an extension of PCF's, with the differentiating rules stated explicitly rather than left to interpretation.
Guideline page showing correct color application on a landing page, with orange, white and blue in balance.
Where the rule gets specific: orange is the brand, but orange alone is too much for a landing page.

Joining them without a hierarchy

The obvious way to connect a sister brand to its parent is an endorsement line — "a program of the Prostate Cancer Foundation." That would have subordinated MvC and cost it the grassroots credibility it was built for.

Instead the two marks sit as peers, joined beneath a shared promise: Curing Together. The tagline carries the endorsement, so each brand keeps its own register. Orange appears only on the MvC side, so even inside the lockup the two stay distinct.

The system specifies how they pair across colored, light, and photographic backgrounds, and sets minimum sizes for each — including a smaller floor for MvC standing alone than when it appears alongside PCF, so the relationship never breaks down at small sizes.

Guideline page showing the two brands paired on colored, light, and photographic backgrounds.
Co-brand configurations across three background conditions.
Guideline page specifying clear space and minimum sizes for the Many vs Cancer mark alone and paired with the PCF logo.
Minimum sizes specified separately for paired and standalone use — 54px alongside PCF, 36px on its own. The clear-space rule measures from the midpoint because the container slants.

Defending the relationship

The misuse rules cover the usual ground — no gradients, no skewing, no special effects. One rule is specific to the architecture: don't position MvC beside the PCF logo with insufficient clear space. That isn't a logo rule, it's a relationship rule. If the two marks crowd each other, the peer relationship collapses into a lockup nobody approved.

Guideline page documenting nine incorrect uses of the Many vs Cancer logo.
Nine documented misuses, including one written specifically to protect the relationship between the two brands.

Building it out

Guidelines are a hypothesis. Applications are where you find out whether a system actually works. I produced the collateral, merchandise, environmental, and digital applications across both brands, and governed usage as departments and partners started building with them.

The Many vs Cancer brand as a web banner and as a large hanging banner in a glass atrium.
Same system, two scales. The campaign line — it takes more than one man to fight cancer, it takes many — carries the brand's whole argument.
Many vs Cancer bottles, tote bags and letterhead using the diagonal shape language in orange and navy.
Merchandise and stationery. The diagonal shape language runs through everything, and the PCF mark appears on the reverse — parent brand present, never dominant.
Many vs Cancer business card, front and back, in navy and orange with the diagonal shape language. Nine by twelve presentation folder in orange and navy with the Many vs Cancer mark and the PCF logo marked Powered by.
On the folder, PCF appears as "Powered by" — the one place a hierarchy is stated, because a presentation folder is where institutional credibility does the work.
Co-branded information postcard with both marks locked up under Curing Together, explaining how to start fundraising.
The co-brand lockup doing its job: PCF's credibility and MvC's invitation on the same card, in the same breath.
Fundraising page banner showing a group running outdoors, with the Many vs Cancer mark and an orange diagonal overlay. Fundraising page banner showing a group of hands stacked together, with the Many vs Cancer mark and an orange diagonal overlay.
Fundraising page banners. Group photography, never a single hero — the brand argues that it takes many, so the imagery had to as well.

What it proved

The two brands ran side by side without either weakening the other. The Foundation kept the institutional register it needed for major gifts and research partnerships. Many vs Cancer got to sound like a movement, because it was allowed to look like one.

The Foundation discontinued the initiative in 2019 as its fundraising strategy shifted. The architecture is the part that stays with me: shared palette, inverted proportion, peer-level co-branding instead of endorsement. It's the cleanest answer I know to a problem most organizations get wrong — how to launch something that speaks in a different voice without spending the credibility of the brand standing behind it.