Dräger Global — Illustrated Healthcare Communication Campaign for Infection Prevention and Control

For Dräger Global, I created a series of large-format illustrated campaign posters and short animated visual pieces for an international communication initiative on infection prevention and control in hospital environments.

The project sits at the intersection of healthcare communication, campaign illustration, poster design, visual metaphor, storyboarding and animated communication assets. The central challenge was to make a serious clinical subject immediately legible for an international audience — without relying on voiceover, dialogue or explanatory copy.

Dräger is an international medical and safety technology company founded in Lübeck in 1889. Its work ranges from acute-care hospital equipment — including neonatal incubators and critical-care systems — to professional safety technologies such as rebreathers for demanding diving operations. Within hospital environments, Dräger’s wider infection prevention and control work addresses the reduction of healthcare-associated infections, safer hygiene processes and more effective clinical workflows.

A wordless visual campaign for hospital hygiene and IPC awareness

The campaign was designed to travel across languages, countries and professional settings. The posters were intended for use in hospitals and related work environments in multiple international markets, where they needed to communicate quickly without depending on translated headlines, explanatory copy or voiceover. Their message had to be understood on the wall, at a glance.

The visual brief called for a classic comic-book look with a clear Roy Lichtenstein reference: bold outlines, heightened expressions, halftone textures, punchy graphic contrasts and the theatrical immediacy of pop-era comic imagery. That language was used carefully. It gave the campaign a strong, instantly readable surface while preserving the seriousness of the underlying subject: hospital hygiene, clinical discipline and infection prevention.

Each concept begins in a familiar non-clinical setting — a household kitchen, a vintage cleaning scene, a classic-car polishing ritual, a mechanic’s workshop — and then shifts into a professional hospital context. The analogy is deliberately simple: people already understand care, cleanliness, maintenance and precision in everyday life. The campaign redirects those instincts toward the more demanding standards of clinical hygiene, hospital cleaning and infection prevention and control.

Illustration as campaign structure, not decoration

This was not a poster series that happened to receive an animated afterlife. The print and motion formats were developed as one system from the start. Each image had to work as:

• a strong large-format campaign poster;
• a compact visual narrative understood in a few seconds;
• a recognizable healthcare communication asset within the wider infection prevention initiative;
• and the basis for a short animated adaptation using movement, transition and sound to guide attention.

That requirement shaped the artwork at every stage. The poster compositions needed a clear internal sequence. The contrast between the two worlds had to read quickly. Props, poses and sightlines had to support the transformation. The animated versions then extended that logic with camera movement, parallax, reveals, object animation and timed transitions — without turning the images into unrelated miniature commercials.

Four campaign concepts for infection prevention and control

The project comprised four core visual concepts, each using a different everyday analogy to introduce the subject of hospital hygiene and infection prevention:

• From Kitchen Chaos to Clinical Cleanliness — a messy kitchen scene transforms into a professional hospital cleaning and hygiene context.
• The Power of Proper Cleaning — a vintage domestic-cleaning setup becomes a clinical sanitation team in action.
• Classic Car Shine vs. Hospital Sterilization — the ritual care given to a polished automobile becomes a visual bridge to clinical precision and controlled cleanliness.
• From Grease and Grit to Surgical Precision — a mechanic’s workshop shifts into a sterile surgical environment, moving from workshop maintenance to hospital discipline.

The recurring structure gave the campaign unity while allowing each poster to have its own tone and visual personality. The images belong together, but they are not variations of the same drawing. Each one needed a distinct scene, cast, color logic and transformation rhythm.

A Roy Lichtenstein–inspired comic visual language for healthcare communication

The comic-book approach was useful here because it allowed the campaign to make clear visual distinctions without becoming diagrammatic. Infection prevention is a serious, process-driven subject. A purely technical treatment would have risked becoming remote; a purely humorous one would have missed the point. The solution was to use an emphatic, highly readable illustration style while keeping the underlying message disciplined.

The result is less “comic relief” than illustrated healthcare communication: images designed to hold attention, establish a visual idea quickly and make an abstract communication theme feel concrete. The campaign posters do not explain hospital hygiene in detail. They create the entry point — a memorable first understanding that can sit alongside more technical communication within the wider initiative.

Animated campaign assets for digital healthcare communication

The short animated versions were developed from the poster concepts rather than designed as separate films. Movement was used selectively: to reveal the transformation, create a sense of progression, bring key objects into focus and make the analogy land with a little more force.

The animations use parallax movement, camera pushes, fades, scene transitions, graphic accents and sound effects. Because the campaign remained wordless, timing carried a larger share of the communication. The viewer needed to understand not only what changed, but why the change mattered, without being instructed by text or narration.

From Kitchen Chaos to Clinical Cleanliness — animated visual for Dräger Global’s infection prevention communication.

Classic Car Shine vs. Hospital Sterilization — animated campaign adaptation for Dräger Global.

From Grease and Grit to Surgical Precision — animated healthcare communication visual.

The Power of Proper Cleaning — animated IPC campaign visual for Dräger Global.

My role in the Dräger campaign

My work on the project covered the visual development from concept to finished assets:

• Visual concept development for the four infection prevention campaign scenes
• Language-independent healthcare communication — developing posters and animated visuals intended to work across international hospital and workplace settings without reliance on translated copy.
• Healthcare communication through visual metaphor
• Storyboarding and sequential scene logic
• Comic-style illustration for large-format posters
• Campaign artwork prepared for static and moving use
• Animation design and motion adaptation
• Video production for the short animated visual pieces

Project credits

• Client: Dräger Global
• Project: International infection prevention and control communication campaign
• Formats: Large-format illustrated posters and short animated campaign visuals
• Creative contribution: Concept development, visual metaphor, storyboarding, poster illustration, animation design and video production
• Illustration and production: Ian David Marsden

Healthcare illustration, medical communication and campaign visuals

This Dräger project is a good example of the kind of visual communication assignment I particularly value: a complex subject, a serious professional audience, and enough creative freedom to find an image system that makes the topic easier to approach without diluting it.

I work on healthcare illustration, medical communication visuals, business illustration, campaign artwork, animated explainer content and visual storytelling for technical or institutional subjects. Some projects need a polished illustrated campaign. Others call for a clearer explainer-film structure, educational imagery, editorial clarity or a full set of motion-ready visual assets.

Related work can be found in business illustration and campaign visuals, hand-drawn explainer videos, business comics and sequential illustration, and the wider selection of case studies.