And so to the Wellcome Collection, and their exploration of the relationship between graphic design and health Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?. The exhibition highlights the widespread and yet subliminal nature of graphic design in constructing and communicating healthcare messages; words and images, signs and symbols, colour, scale and format, all carefully structured to communicate, and in doing so shaping our environment, society and personal health.
Creating a health message that an individual is willing to self-identify with, and consequently inspire action or change their behavior, requires a range of design interventions. Surprisingly, sometimes a small structural change can create the greatest impact.
For example, ‘nudge’ theory suggests that presenting people with a mandated choice or opt-out question makes it significantly more likely that they would choose to carry an organ Donor card.
The exhibition is divided into zones; persuasion, education, hospitalisation, medication, contagion and provocation.
Each of which explain one aspect of design in health, from national public awareness campaigns such as those for AIDS (TBWA) and the Samaritans (BBDO), to design research such as the NPSA’s findings on improving pharmaceutical packaging design and patient safety (RCA’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design).
I enjoyed seeing Dr. John Snow’s historic map of cholera deaths around the Broad street pump, and Florence Nightingale’s ‘rose’ charts to illustrate deaths from disease in the Crimea, classics of information design.
On a larger scale, the sympathetic A&E information and wayfinding system for the NHS (Pearson Lloyd) and the now ubiquitous emergency service ‘battenburg’ patterns (PSDB) are reminders of how effective design ideas quickly spread and become an accepted part of the environment.
Whether taking the correct tablet, deciding to donate an organ or to practice safe sex, graphic design influences our health and wellbeing. Can Graphic Design Save Your Life? considers just how vital graphic design can be.
