How to approach layout design for medical illustration
Layout design is incredibly important in informational graphics, especially for some of our medical illustration projects. It incorporates graphic design, typography, text alignment, copy editing, image editing and more to create an optimal layout that informs your viewer with the key messages you want to show.
Layout design is something that I struggled with when I first started doing it. I have been known to spend a day on a small panel layout, and it was mainly because I fought with indecisiveness with my design choices, which built up some mental barriers in my mind, and I didn’t do enough foreplanning before I started production. I also spent too much time looking at other people’s layout work for inspiration but I didn’t really have an understanding of how to translate what worked for them into my own layouts.
As with any other skill, it took me practice and research to finally get to a place where I can approach a layout with ease, make quick design decisions and know when to drop a layout and move on to a new concept if it’s not working.
Today I wanted to share with you some tips that I have for layout work, areas in your work where you can practice creating layouts and some further reading to sharpen up your skills.
Understand the messaging
As with any other project, the first things you need to define are:
- What do you want to show?
- What do you want your audience to know?
- What are the important key players of this story?
If you haven’t defined these things then you will find it challenging to move forward in an optimal direction when it comes to the final layout design.
So here’s an example:
What do you want to show?
I want to show atherosclerosisWhat do you want your audience to know?
They need to understand what an artery looks like and what atherosclerosis looks like. They should also understand that this is a gradual buildupWhat are the important key players of this story?
Artery, red blood cells, fibrin, platelets, fatty deposits, and some associated text.
Do some market research
Next, you want to see if anyone has done something similar to this in your field. I do this so that I have an understanding of what’s available in the market as well as what good or bad trends are being repeated. I can then use these examples as baseline to try and do something a little different to what’s already available. Personally, I don’t think there’s any value on copying or repeating something that’s already been done — you’re only going to shortchange yourself and not grow creatively.
Do some inspiration research
Once I’ve done my market research the next step for me is to go and look at other parts of the creative industry, such as graphic design or web design, for layout inspiration. I usually save these as links, take screen grabs or pin them to a private Pinterest mood board. When I’m doing this I look for designs that catch my eye or designs that might be on-trend.
Translate what you like into design thinking
Now, this is probably the hardest part for most people and that’s breaking down what you like about a piece of inspiration into simple design thinking.
Once I’ve gathered about 5 to 10 pieces of inspiration I’ll have them opened together on my Pinterest board or on Adobe Bridge so that I can see them all at once. This way I can begin to pinpoint any repeating design ideas that I like, notice any immediate trends between these selected pieces, and also to identify what design ideas could be translated into my own layout.
When I was first starting out I wrote this stuff down, like the example image below, but now that I have more practice I can list and remember these in my head. If you want to practice putting design ideas into words then it might also be useful reading this article as well as reading up on design fundamentals.
Speed layout
Once I have all of this information in place I’ll dive into photoshop or even pen and paper to start creating multiple layout ideas for my project. To make sure that I create multiple layout options and ideas with speed I’ve adopted Aaron Draplin’s approach to logo design because I feel that his methodology translates well to creating layouts.
The approach that he takes with creating logo concepts of one logo is to duplicate and retain various copies of each logo design change. If he finds that he’s going down a not so great design path, he can look back and pin-point where he went wrong and revert to a previous design. By the end of his logo design process, he has a wonderful overview of the various design iterations he made to reach the final product.
Before I adopted this method I would do multiple layouts within the one canvas and delete layouts that I didn’t quite like, which meant that they were lost throughout my development process. After a couple of hours of pixel pushing I would have not record of what I had achieved and would come out feeling pretty disheartened. Once I embraced Aaron’s method I found my process sped up and felt like I could gain a good overview of my process and ideation.
The goal for speed layouts is to do it quickly, do as many as you can and to not overthink things. At the end of it you’ll have a couple of layout examples where you can pull elements of what’s working into a final layout and drop what’s not working. Speed layouts take practice, at first you might only come up with 3 variations but after much practice that number might increase to more.
Choose the best parts and refine
After I’ve done all this I can then select the best layout design choices and go deeper to refine the overall layout. This is where I can hone in on certain areas without losing the overall messaging because I’ve already established that.
I’ll still follow the iteration method as I refine the layout, making sure not to lose a record of any changes made in case I need to revert back to a previous version.
Now that you know one method of how to approach layout design it’s useful to put that into practice.
Layout design practice in your portfolio
You can adopt the same methodology for pieces in your portfolio. Rather than just showcasing an illustration by itself it’s always more impactful if you see the illustration in-situ. This shows your audience that you consider where your work will live when you create content for them.
Another advantage of using past portfolio pieces to practice on is that you know the content of your portfolio pieces well, probably better than anyone else, so it will be easier to describe your design thinking and key messages of your work.
Analyze and break down layouts you like
It’s also useful to consider the design thinking of work that you admire. Try to break down their layouts into simple elements or shapes to see how things are grouped together. Then see if you can put simple words to explain why it makes that layout effective, this will help in inspiration research.
Final thoughts
I hope these tips help you get started in practising layout design for your medical illustration projects. Keep reading up on layout design fundamentals, take inspiration from various parts of the creative industry and make sure you stay consistent in practicing this skill.
