Translation Design for medicine leaflets. Research and innovation

In the context of Design for health, there are many complexities and challenges that designers have to face. In this paper, we will analyze the main characteristics of a specific communicative artifact “the medicine leaflet”. The goal is to frame it on the basis of its textual and paratextual nature, but also to reflect on its multiple critical aspects. This analytical perspective is strictly connected to Communication Design and Information Design, but more specifically to Translation Design conceived here in terms of a “transformative design activity” aimed at reformulating, transferring, transcoding, or, more often, transmuting a source text into a final one. Through a series of case studies, we would like to highlight the role of the translator-designer in generating new interpretations, contaminations, simplifications or expansions of content that improve the communicative access to the medicine and consequently, facilitate the relationship between the various reference interlocutors (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and patients of all kinds).