Our founder Chris Pymble, then a product developer, worked to condense pages and pages of technical specifications and reports into crisp illustrations that could be used all over the world. Then, her husband had a serious work accident.

“He would be out of surgeries and under the influence of really heavy painkillers when he would be handed booklets with information on how to change his dressing or take his medication. It was extremely difficult because he couldn’t understand the materials he was being given.”

Given her prior experience, Chris was baffled that this method of patient education and communication was still the accepted norm in the healthcare setting. 

This prompted the initial idea for Graphics et al. - a bespoke studio that made simple graphics for clients. However, she soon realised that she needed a different kind of business to address the problem.

Evidence suggests that visual aids make learning simpler and faster. However, the process of creating visual aids is technically challenging, time consuming and expensive. While other digital tools have tried to resolve this, quality and accuracy remain issues in the scientific and medical field.

In Australia about 44% of adults read at a literacy level of a 7 to 14 year old, meaning healthcare information needs to be simple and accessible. However, almost all health content in the world is written by individuals with a university education. Even in instances where there is consensus amongst doctors and hospital staff that visual aids would make healthcare communication easier, time remains a challenge to adoption. 

By providing automated, pre-approved templates for staff to choose from, we reduce the time it takes to create visual aids from 15-20 minutes to 10 seconds. This also removes the more technical challenges staff may have with creating aids such as visual appeal, accuracy, and branding guideline compliance.