Can Graphic Design Save your Life? The Wellcome Collection Exhibition
I visited the Wellcome Collection for the first time last Saturday for the ‘Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?’ exhibition. It explores the relationship between graphic design and the impact it has on our health through six separate areas of persuasion, education, hospitalisation, medication, contagion, and provocation. As a graphic designer I almost have a biased opinion but I went in with an open mind on the search for creative and inspirational graphic design.
I connected with the exhibition almost immediately as the first section covered the surreal advertising of Saatchi & Saatchi’s hugely successful Silk Cut campaign. It was refreshing to touch on the subject and to again familiarise myself with the surreal tobacco advertising and its dual meanings, as this was the subject of my dissertation when I completed my degree. Although it covered the Silk Cut campaign, I was surprised the Benson & Hedges campaign wasn’t mentioned as I found that particular campaign just as important.
An example of Saatchi & Saatchi's Silk Cut campaign.
It was interesting to see, after writing my dissertation in 2005/06 and the UK smoking ban in 2007, how anti-smoking campaigns in the last ten years have been extremely progressive in making the sale of cigarettes harder and less desirable through government restrictions. It does seem now that cigarette advertising has now practically been fazed out and in the past 100 years has done a complete one-eighty. At one point smoking was advertised as a cure for certain aliments, to now promoting the potentially massive health risks involved to deter smokers and non smokers alike. It is through this process of restriction that graphic designers are pushed into a corner and are made rethink their approach to advertising smoking. This in turn has forcefully produced some of the most creative and influential advertising campaigns of recent years. Hell, it influenced me enough to write a 10,000 word dissertation on the subject!
The parts of the exhibition that caught my attention the most was when designers took the most complex of subject matters and transformed them into a simple, easy to understand formats. This is the main objective in infographic design. I’ve previously worked on a few freelance projects experimenting with infographics where I receive a page a text and have been asked to transform that into a visually appealing design. One of the most famous examples of information graphics is the London Underground map when it was simplified by Harry Beck in 1931. It is this style of simplification and visual representation that I found particularly interesting in relation to a couple of sections of the exhibition in the way infographics can play a part in making medical information easier to understand. Educationally, condensing down highly detailed medical drawings into super simple, modern, colour coded graphics of how the body works and also the effect of diseases and medicines have on it has benefits not only for aspiring medical professionals but for patients too. It can provide piece of mind and can be a comforting tool to give people more of an understanding of their own medical conditions either as an overview or on a molecular level. It’s all about memory and retaining that information for it to effective.
Throughout this exhibition it easy to see how the use of colour, symbols and logos play a huge part in our health decisions as well as transcending language barriers. Going back to my point about the London tube map, it is simplified to get the person from A to B in the quickest and most convenient route possible. This is no different with the use colour and symbolism in our healthcare system. In a medical emergency where you need professional medical assistance or simply some medication, all these elements are put in place to guide you in the right direction. For example here in the UK, we know a green cross means a pharmacy, a white ‘H’ in a blue square means hospital, and the international symbol of a red cross means medical aid.
Popular Healthcare icons in the UK.
Our hospitals, like the tube map, also adopt colours to better guide you to your correct area of the hospital along with murals to convey a calming atmosphere and making a less daunting place to visit. Even over the counter drug prescriptions use branding to influence you whether consciously or subconsciously into purchasing a particular company’s products through their years of creating a reliable and trust worthy brand. Hence why the pharmaceutical industry is worth billions, even trillions of dollars. Put it like this, Would you rather use an established brand of medicine or would you risk it on one you have never heard of over price? How much is your health worth?
Even though in this blog post I’ve only scratched the surface of what the exhibition covers and the parts I personally enjoyed, it did provide a lot of food for thought. When I define what I think a great exhibition should be, there are certain criteria it must abide by. It should be informative, inspirational, engaging, and make me want to research the subject further. This exhibition ticked all the boxes as it kept me engaged the whole way through with detailed information and exceptional creative design. Even though it was relatively small, in comparison to other exhibitions attended, it was brilliantly curated. The fact that the exhibition was free was quite surprising as I would of gladly paid to see it so instead I made a small donation towards the Wellcome Collection.
So, the answer to ‘Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?’, you’ll find out one day when your life depends on it.
Be sure to check the exhibition out www.wellcomecollection.org