Antibiotics Awareness Tri-Fold
As the Graphic Designer and UI/UX-minded project lead for this CDC tri-fold, I treated the piece as a concise product experience. I kicked off with stakeholder workshops to align on outcomes—empower patients, support dentists, and reinforce the CDC’s commitment to combating antibiotic resistance. From those sessions I shaped clear audience needs: reassurance, plain language, and easy scanning in a stressful care moment.
I translated the strategy into a calm, credible visual system: healthcare blues for trust, ample white space for clarity, and authentic patient–provider photography to humanize the message. I specified accessible, sans-serif typography; set a strong hierarchy with color blocks, bullets, and micro-headlines; and built a compact component set so every panel communicates a single idea.
The panel flow mirrors a conversation: the cover sets purpose; panel one offers quick actions; the center panel details what to tell your dentist, using bullets for recall; closing panels deliver value messaging, resources, and next steps. Throughout, I enforced brand alignment with the Be Antibiotics Aware campaign and handled production—preflight, print specs, and handoff—to ensure fidelity at scale.
The outcome: a trustworthy, scannable tool that reduces confusion, prompts better patient–dentist dialogue, and supports safer, smarter antibiotic use.
- Client: CDC Communications
- Role: Visual Design, Layout, Illustration
- Tools: Adobe InDesign, Illustrator
- Deliverable: Print-ready tri-fold PDF
The primary audience for this trifold brochure is dental patients who may be prescribed antibiotics before or after a dental procedure. The secondary audience is dental professionals who can use this as a resource to educate patients. My goal in approaching this piece was to balance accessibility and clarity with a professional, reassuring tone. Patients may be anxious about medical care, so the design had to immediately communicate trust, while guiding them toward safe antibiotic use. Ultimately, this brochure needed to educate, simplify complex medical guidance, and reduce patient confusion while maintaining CDC’s brand authority.
From a visual design perspective, I chose a clean, modern aesthetic with a strong emphasis on blue tones, which evoke trust, professionalism, and healthcare credibility. The “Be Antibiotics Aware” logo, combined with imagery of dentists and smiling patients, creates a sense of reassurance and relatability. I also introduced iconography and photography to break up text-heavy sections, helping readers scan quickly. Typography was deliberately simple and sans-serif, allowing for readability across all ages. The color-blocking approach provided hierarchy—blue for authority and trust, white for clarity, and accent colors to highlight important callouts.
The trifold structure guided how information was sequenced:
- Front Cover: Clear headline (“Antibiotic Use for a Safe Dental Visit”) immediately defines purpose and draws attention. The patient and dentist imagery establish context and relatability.
- Inside Left Panel: Presents actionable steps patients can take (“How can you be Antibiotics Aware?”). This was designed to build immediate trust and empowerment.
- Inside Center Panel: Functions as the educational anchor, listing what to tell your dentist before taking antibiotics. The bullet-point structure improves scannability and retention.
- Inside Right & Back Panels: Serve as reinforcement and resources. The messaging at the bottom (“Improving antibiotic use…”) acts as a concise value proposition, while contact and CDC info provide next steps.
By structuring it this way, the panels flow like a conversation with the patient—first awareness, then detail, then resources.
The result is a patient-facing communication tool that simplifies a complex topic into an approachable narrative. The design achieves both form and function: it is visually engaging, but also improves comprehension and recall of critical information. By integrating trust-building visuals with structured content, the brochure empowers patients to take ownership of their health decisions while supporting dentists in communicating effectively. The ultimate impact is increased patient safety, reduced misuse of antibiotics, and alignment with the CDC’s broader campaign against antimicrobial resistance.
