Looking for BRAIN or MRI related design

Brain Development Study

We are looking for a fun design that will be used to symbolize our research project. We are looking for something fun and fresh and brain or MRI related.

The study is a joint project between the Department of Pediatrics and the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute on Child and Family Development at Wayne State University. Funding for this project comes from private grants and from the National Institute of Mental Health, the world’s leading organization dedicated to mental health research.

We are looking at brain development in children and adolescents to understand how they think and process information. Our research is especially focused on the development of emotional information processing. We have near-term goals of mapping brain systems that underlie emotional development, and long-range goals focused on finding new pathways to early diagnosis and treatment of emotional disorders. The research from this study is already proving to be incredibly valuable for plotting fundamental aspects of brain development, while also determining new avenues for possible treatment and intervention. Findings from our work have been featured in numerous academic journals as well as in the PBS Special “This Emotional Life.”

We target children and their parents. Children in our studies are between 7 and 17 years old. The study takes place at Wayne State University and all families involved live in Southeastern Michigan. Families come in for in person testing, and all children/adolescents enrolled in the project are invited to participate in an MRI research study. They will have their brain scanned & will receive pictures of their brain.

• We want to make parents and children feel proud of their participation in this highly important research study.

• Brains are cool, so we are open to designs that include brain shapes, and brain inspiration – both subtle brain forms & overt brain forms are of interest.

• We do brain imaging with the children with an MRI machine – this could also be a source of inspiration – to create a design that depicts the scanner, the brain and scanner, the child in the scanner – all would be interesting to us.

• This design should be something that makes the families involved feel good.

• It should not be too cheesy! Remember it also has to appeal to pre-teen and teenage kids.

• It should be family friendly.

• The color scheme is wide open - we have no prior materials we seek to match.

• Because the study is longitudinal (we track participants over years), we want to make sure that our participants have a strong positive memory about our study. Again, because we check in with them every year it is important that our brand is memorable and exciting.

• We intend to use the design on gift bags for the kids, coffee mugs for the parents, thank you cards, mother's day cards and birthday cards.

• We would be happy to receive the file in multiple file formats – for example *.psd, *.pdf ,*.tif, *.tiff, *.jpg, but not in an illustrator format, please.

• Please do not use any stock images or clip art in the design