Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?

The second and updated edition of this ambitious book 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? was first published to coincide with the opening of the exhibition of the same name at Wellcome Collection, London – a museum that explores the connections between medicine, life and art. Co-curated by GraphicDesign&, with Wellcome Collection, the exhibition includes work by practitioners past and present alongside historical work from Wellcome Library and other archives. The exhibition was open from 7 September 2017 until 14 January 2018 and had a total of 109,279 visitors over 110 days.

The book is structured according to the six sections of the exhibition: Persuasion, Education, Hospitalisation, Medication, Contagion and Provocation. It 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.

Can Graphic Design Save Your Life? – a book that demonstrates how graphic design impacts on what we notice, what we understand and the actions we take – and the essential role graphic design plays in matters of life and death.

The second edition of the book includes four extra projects over 16 pages, and is printed on a high gloss paper.