Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?

A book that examines the varied and vital relationship between graphic design and health, focusing on work that demonstrates how communication strategies and visual languages are employed to persuade, inform, prevent and ultimately protect. Can Graphic Design Save Your Life? spotlights how graphic design impacts what we notice, what we understand and the actions we take—as well as the essential role graphic design plays in matters of life and death.

Structured into six thematic sections (Persuasion, Education, Hospitalization, Medication, Contagion and Provocation), the book features public-facing work by mostly contemporary graphic designers from around the world: from unbranded cigarette packaging to apps about the human body, minimalist pill packaging to hospital information systems, and urgent public health warnings to revolutionising health awareness campaigns. Alongside are answers to the question posed by the title, from contributing designers, design writers and health professionals that give valuable insight into the design process.

Published in conjunction with a 2017-2018 exhibition of the same name at the Wellcome Collection, London (a museum that explores the connections between medicine, life, and art), and curated by the UK's GraphicDesign& (graphic designer Lucienne Roberts and design educator Rebecca Wright) along with the Wellcome Collection. 

Designed by LucienneRoberts+

Published by GraphicDesign&, 2017

Softcover, 240 pages, full color, 7 × 4.4 inches

ISBN: 978-0-9572381-4-5