The feeling's neutral for pharmaceutical packaging: How the pharmaceutical aesthetic equals the modernist aesthetic
Document Type
Journal Article
Publisher
Australasian Medical Journal
Faculty
Faculty of Education and Arts
School
School of Communications and Arts
Abstract
Emotion is now a consideration for industrial design within the health sphere to help speed the recovery of patients. Communication design however, lags behind other design disciplines in this regard. This paper demonstrates the historical reasons for this: That the health and pharmaceutical graphic aesthetic is the embodiment of the Neue Schweizer Grafik. I will firstly establish that there is a general aesthetic in this genre of graphic design, and secondly that it comes from post-war Switzerland. This mid-century modernist approach to graphics which held designers in thrall into the 1980s still has a stranglehold in those industries where its aseptic appearance seems to be appropriate: medicine, pharmaceuticals, chemistry. This paper explains some of the flaws in the modernist graphic approach, specifically in its rejection of illustration and humour, and argues for design based on psychology and emotion rather than flawed and outdated manifestos.
DOI
10.4066/AMJ.2009.121
Access Rights
free_to_read
Comments
Medley, S. (2009). The feeling's neutral for pharmaceutical packaging: How the pharmaceutical aesthetic equals the modernist aesthetic. Australasian Medical Journal (Online), (11), 146-151. Available here