14 medical and editorial illustrations of a variety of sizes were created for HEART’s 1st edition workbook on healthy sex and relationships and were iteratively refined through monthly meetings with the authors and book designer. Color choice was informed by a style guide and self-publishing protocol. The visual style of the content was designed to be calm, soft, sensitive, and inclusive for a patient audience.
The cover art was designed to depict major themes of the book manuscript such as popular and cultural expectations around sex and relationships, relationships between queer and trans people, birth control and menstrual products, family, pleasure, and disability. The foreground of the cover features an emoji-based text exchange, alluding to a largely digital landscape where discussion of such topics often takes place.
Grayscale images with spot color informed by the HEART style guide. Intention and care were taken to establish a visual vocabulary of contrast, tone, texture, and value to denote race/ ethnicity and gender.
For medical illustrations featuring anatomy in the book, orientation views were chosen to allow the reader to understand the orientation and overlap of anatomy beyond available sex education materials. Some visual and labeling choices were informed by the “decolonize medicine” framework.
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