Thesis project · Editorial
Health prevention booklets
My graphic design thesis: illustrated health booklets for the primary care centres of Zapallar, Chile, explained by a cast of pumpkin characters.
- Client
- Municipality of Zapallar and its primary care centres (thesis client)
- Context
- Thesis project, Graphic Design and Media Marketing, DUOC UC Viña del Mar
- Year
- 2011
- Tools
- InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop
The booklets
Choose a booklet to open it.
Context
Zapallar's health department wanted to promote disease prevention, but what it handed out was either generic government leaflets with little impact or material made by the health staff themselves. They wanted everything organised by age and medical area, in the municipality's colours.
Goal
Improve communication between the health centres and the people of the commune with printed pieces that are ordered, friendly and easy to carry, and give the health service a character people recognise.
Design decisions
The main decisions, as I presented them in the thesis:
- Booklets of 21 × 13 cm: comfortable to read, easy to carry and without the space limits of a leaflet.
- One booklet per stage of life, following the family life cycle model the health service works with.
- Pumpkin characters: Zapallar means “place of pumpkins”, after the fruit that once grew there in large numbers.
- Doctor Z, the family doctor, leads a medical team (midwife, physiotherapist, nutritionist, dentist and psychologist), each speaking about their own field.
- The Zapata family: a common Chilean surname that also echoes the word zapallo.
- Three typefaces: Marker Felt for titles, Ain't Nothing Fancy for call-outs and Tekton Pro for longer texts.
- A two-column grid for the information, with illustrations and call-outs used as backgrounds so the pages feel less rigid.
Process
Research into the health service and its audience, a study of the mascots used in public campaigns, then pencil sketches of the characters and scenes before the final layouts.
Result
Six booklets of 24 pages, one for each stage of life, from early childhood to older adults.
Looking back
Written in 2026. A look back today, not part of the original project.
Looking at the booklets today, the texts are what I would change first. Many passages keep the clinical wording of the source material, such as “microvascular and cardiovascular complications”, instead of saying it in everyday language. Some blocks are long and set small in a condensed typeface, so they are harder to read than they need to be. I would also have the copy edited to remove repetitions and small errors.