Health Gets Crafty

This collaboration between Taiwan’s organ donation centre and artist Chen Wen-Tai tackled cultural resistance to organ donation using traditional paper art techniques. It led to a 28% increase in the annual organ donation consent signing rate, with Lions Health Grand Prix for Good Juror Alemu Emuron, Chief Creative Officer at the Quollective, praising how “it fought tradition with tradition”.

Also promoting organ donation was this initiative from the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). It placed 233 handmade dolls in hospitals and general practitioner surgeries – each one representing a child on the transplant waiting list. Visitors could scan a QR code on the doll’s badge to learn the children's stories and register as organ donors. It earned 1.5bn impressions and shows how to use a simple visual aid as a call to action.

To challenge Australia’s negative perception of gluten-free food, Wholegreen Bakery launched a coeliac-friendly cake that looked like ‘tasteless’ cardboard but actually tasted delicious. It lifted its sales by 24%. Design Lions Juror Josefina Casellas, VP, Executive Creative Director and General Manager of R/GA, LATAM, appreciated how “the role of the design is the idea”.

Tech company Fujitsu communicated pollution data through culinary art, using its digital twin technology to contaminate cakes with pollutants we breathe in every day. Unveiled at a high-profile event in Tokyo, the Carbon Cakes earned ¥24m (€154,048) in media. It shows how powerful creating a tangible product can be in communicating a specific health message.

Medtech company Getinge published a cookbook specifically for heart surgeons featuring recipes designed to help them hone precision skills like stitching. The book is now in use in 23 markets. It demonstrates how to use craft to forge a link between a professional skill and a passion point.

Using the Latin alphabet, this visually represented symptoms of breast cancer to encourage women to check their breasts through sight as well as touch. Some 600 general practitioners displayed the posters in their surgeries, and the Dutch Breast Care Campaign received seven requests to translate the signs into different languages. It shows how to use typography to transform text into a channel that raises awareness and sparks action.