What Role Does Design Play in a Public Health Crisis?
A look back at the positive impact communication design can have in matters of life and death
By Lucienne Roberts
Whether employed to warn or impart information about symptoms, prevention, and infection, graphic design plays a significant role in the front-line response to infectious disease, making life-saving messages accessible to all. Examples of this can be seen in the bold graphics used to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and in the NGO campaigns during the 2014 and 2015 Ebola outbreak. Further back, posters during WWII educated soldiers about the risks of malaria, and in the 1950s, Marie Neurath worked with health officials in Nigeria to put the famed Isotype information design system to use combating the spread of leprosy.
Why then, media experts in the UK had been asking, was the government not harnessing our skills in a nationwide information campaign for the COVID-19 pandemic? “Public health is all about behavior change and a public health strategy lives or dies by the effectiveness of its communication,” wrote Sonia Sodha in the Guardian. “So far, communications experts… have their heads in their hands over the way this has been handled.” In recent days this has started to change. At daily No 10 press briefings, lecterns…
