The Lancet
I led multimedia at The Lancet for several years, establishing a team that used videos, infographics, and podcasts to help drive real-world change and improve lives. Starting from almost no investment in infographics or video, we developed a three-year strategy that first built a foundation for consistent, sustainable content production, and then progressed towards more ambitious and impactful projects.
Infographics
For years, The Lancet had produced infographics sporadically, or published those submitted by authors alongside their papers, resulting in wide variation in style, quality, and impact. We established a clear system for identifying when an additional infographic could elevate published content and directly increase its impact for a well-defined audience, such as policy-makers needing to understand an important new conclusion, or healthcare professionals in need of a quick overview of practice-changing results. We created a new infographics designer role, and with them established new repeatable formats with targeted goals, such as clinical disease summaries, visual abstracts, and graphics based on important new research. You can see the continuing legacy of this programme at The Lancet.
Video
The Lancet had never given sustained focus to video content, instead occasionally releasing ad hoc clips or author-submitted videos. To establish a strong foundation, we commissioned a suite of assets and a visual identity for high-quality video that could directly give a voice to researchers and clinicians. We then developed new formats around these assets, setting the tone for subsequent years of consistent, high-quality, and impactful video production.
Production: Nice and Serious
We built on these with formats that allowed for varied regular content, from low-maintenance videos produced alongside authors to encourage them to present their research without huge production burden (Clinical Picture videos), to working with specialist film producers on content about the Lancet and what it publishes, and high quality explorations of recent articles:
Videos (L-R): Ed Prosser, Andrew Khosravani, Thom Hoffman
200 Anniversary
The culmination of the three-year strategy, and the final project I worked on while at The Lancet, was a video series to mark the 200th anniversary of the journal. Rather than focus solely on The Lancet itself, this was an opportunity to look forward, and alongside the year of journal output itself, draw attention to some of the most pressing issues in medical science and healthcare. We commissioned filmmaker Thom Hoffman to create this series of 6 films:
Videos: Thom Hoffman