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My wife works in the NHS as a palliative care doctor.
She needs to get a leaflet-style MS Word document widely disseminated around the hospital.
It looks very dated and boring...
[img] 
[/img]
[url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/sl2000/13828718673 ]pcleaflet by sl2000, on Flickr[/url]
...and she was hoping that I could improve it a bit. Problem is I work in IT and can only make things look like I'm told rather than coming up with a nice design.
We'd both be very much obliged if any of the more designery types here could take a look and see if there's some simple improvements I could make.
Palliative Care is not a well-funded speciality, so there's no money either from the hospital or drugs reps to pay someone to do this.
I've put the document on dropbox: [url= https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85791282/anonymised%20eolc%20document.docx ]anonymised eolc document.docx[/url].
This could be fun depending what mood the graphic designers are in.
Hmm, someone I used to work with would make that look like an explosion in a font factory. I think it looks OK.
Communication not decoration
Looks ok to me
IANAD
probably does need some pie charts though.
Just use fewer capitalised words.
Looks fine, but a unicorn and a rainbow can brighten any document - fo' sho'
Replace the words with a phallus.
[s]IDENTIFY=[/s] A patient is a real person somebodies family, freind or workmate, They have cancer,and dont have long to live.
[s]Undertake multi disciplinary team assesment[/s], get everyone together who will be involbved with treatment of the person who is dying and chat about the treatments /outcomes.
Document, Write things down and give a copy to close relatives.
Re evaluate, chat to family, person who is dying and other staff frequently, make them aware of what is going to happen and how it is happening.
Been there and its not a nice place to be, staff training for all on how to talk to dying patients and relatives helps,as does some compassion.
No need for fancy words and long drawn out appraisals.
I would have thought the nhs would have a full set of design guidelines that are supposed to be used for all literature, you could start by getting hold of a copy of that.
I would have thought the nhs would have a full set of design guidelines that are supposed to be used for all literature, you could start by getting hold of a copy of that.
There are some resources eg http://www.nhsidentity.nhs.uk/tools-and-resources/patient-information mainly around external comms - but nothing for how to produce internal literature.
If you all think this looks fine then that's fab - we'll leave as is (after taking out some capital letters).
Suggestions:
(Always) Reduce word count
Pose short questions for headers. It should be immediately clear why/when to read.
Support with examples (the explanations)
Is the officialese appropriate?
Crib a good example (flu pandemic got a lot of press last few days)
Questions
Is the up down flow repetition?
If so replace with a circlular flow - this can also be your leading graphic. A stronger graphic could increase impact.
If not what does it mean?
Colour: Use either graduations if these are waypoints, or common signal colours to show hazard emphasis (red amber etc.).