At the end of a long day seeing patients, physicians face another daunting task: hours of paperwork documenting each visit in what doctors often call "pajama time", which extends into their personal hours. This after-hours administrative work has led to an epidemic of physician burnout, which is largely invisible to those outside healthcare. Abridge offers a transformative solution with their trusted AI-powered clinical conversation platform purpose-built for healthcare. Creating verifiable clinical notes in real time, Abridge saves physicians over 70 hours of documentation each month, allowing them to focus fully on their patients’ needs. Time Magazine acknowledged their innovative technology by listing Abridge as one of the 200 Best Inventions of 2024 and naming founder Shiv Rao among the 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2024. The company would also earn a place on Forbes' prestigious AI 50 list recognizing the most promising artificial intelligence companies.
When Abridge founder Shiv Rao approached Pentagram, his company—founded in 2019— already gained traction with doctors and hospital administrators; in 2023, leading healthcare software company Epic chose Abridge as its first-ever partner in generative AI, integrating the technology directly into their medical records system. Amid their success, Abridge sought to create an identity system that conveyed its intelligent platform in strategic positioning and visual expression. Competitors had started entering the space, mostly using off-the-shelf AI models. As a practicing cardiologist, Rao brings a firsthand understanding of physician burnout to this technical innovation. While others were adapting generic AI for healthcare, Abridge was building proprietary models specifically for clinical conversations—technology doctors describe as "life-changing" and "magical." Supporting 28 languages, from Spanish to Punjabi, their AI is purpose-built for healthcare's complexity.
The Pentagram team looked at other medical AI transcription services on the market and it was clear that something was missing in the broader messaging. Most competitors describe their software as a "co-pilot" or an "assistant." The value of Abridge's service is far more holistic—both functionally and emotionally, and for both doctor and patient—which led us to reposition Abridge's brand around the message "Taken care of." This statement reflects the core of healthcare—doctors taking care of patients, and Abridge takes care of doctors, which creates a circle of care. ”Taken care of” expresses precision and competence, while acknowledging the humanity at the heart of healthcare.
Pentagram’s positioning provided the foundation to articulate Abridge's deeper purpose. Working closely with the team, we refined their mission to "Power Deeper Understanding" and their vision to "Heal Healthcare Together." These reflect the medical community’s shared fundamental goal: giving doctors the tools to provide better care. Physicians speak a common language of pragmatic optimism when discussing improving healthcare, as they recognize better doctors’ tools lead to better patient outcomes. For Abridge’s visual identity, we embraced the rich metaphoric potential of the name itself. It suggests not only bridging gaps—between doctors and patients, between spoken conversations and written documentation, and between different languages—but also the structural elegance of engineering that serves humans. Our team found inspiration in ashlar masonry bridges, particularly the Pont du Gard aqueduct in southern France. These ancient structures demonstrate precise engineering’s power in creating enduring human infrastructure. The bridge's architectural principles—the relationship between upper and lower elements and the balance of load and support—provide the template for an "A" logo that splits into two distinct but harmonious parts.
From this foundational letterform, we developed “Abridge Display," a custom typeface built on the same architectural principle of upper and lower elements. Each letter, like its inspiration in the Pont du Gard aqueduct, can split and recombine in infinite variations. “Abridge Display” is a generative system that mirrors Abridge's own AI technology. In motion, these letterforms come alive as their parts separate and fuse in unexpected and vibrant combinations. This systematic flexibility became the foundation for a complete design system: the deconstructed letterforms could transform into waveforms visualizing speech, combine into super graphics, or become architectural elements for environmental design.
Abridge’s bold, unconventional identity system has supported Abridge's remarkable growth across major health systems—from Kaiser Permanente's network of 40 hospitals and 600 medical offices, to Yale New Haven Health System and Emory Healthcare. Like Abridge's AI technology, their design system is precise and seamlessly adapts across different contexts and touchpoints.
With Abridge's new identity, we found a way to start with a strong foundation—a bridge between doctors' and patients' needs—and design a system that conveys precision and care. Like Abridge's AI technology itself, the identity system transforms complexity into clarity, creating something that is both technically sophisticated and fundamentally human.
