Verena Petrasch

 

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Development of icons for pharmaceuticals.
mainly for illiterate people

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According to the UNESCO there are about one billion illiterate people in this world. This is a scary number of people. Even when trying to take pharmaceuticals properly the inability to read can be a big problem.

I started thinking about this topic after my dad, a pharmacist, told me the story of a man who bought suppository in his pharmacy and came back an hour later wit a foaming mouth…

In the course of my researches I found out that indeed there is demand for a pictographic description how to take pharmaceuticals in a right way. So I started to develop icons that answer the most important questions when taking a pharmaceutical: Where (eye, ear, nose, mouth, anal, vaginal,…)? How (drip, inject, swallow, scrunch, with liquid,…)? When (in the morning, at midday, in the evening, at night,…)? How many (two pills, three drops,…)? Which sex (male, female)? Important warning notices (Attention during pregnancy! No alcohol!…)?

The main idea was to make personalized icons. Nothing pre-printed on packages or instruction sheets, as the taking of pharmaceuticals can change from person to person and from case to case. So the idea was to produce stickers with the icons on them, which can be stuck user-defined on the packages and instruction sheets. People with really bad diseases who have to take pharmaceuticals to survive get emergency-cards to carry with them every day. In case of sudden unconsciousness or in case of an accident it can be a life saving assistance for the helper to be able to find out very quickly about when this person has to take which pharmaceuticals.

For a regular taking of more than one pill a day there are little boxes in which the pharmaceuticals can be kept divided into the categories “morning”, “midday”, “evening” and “night”.