A bandage pack containing a bone marrow donor registry kit has won a White Pencil at the D&AD Awards (+ movie).
Help! I've Cut Myself and I Want to Save a Life kits, which can be bought over the counter, contain plasters and bandages for covering small cuts, as well as cotton swabs. A small amount of blood from a cut can be caught on a swab and posted to a marrow donor registry in a pre-paid envelope, which also comes in the simple green and white package.
Graham Douglas, a member of creative agency Droga5, came up with the idea after his twin brother was diagnosed with Leukaemia and an unknown bone marrow donor saved his life.
"Unfortunately, the marrow donor registry is one of the most underrepresented donor programs in the world," says Douglas. "It's no wonder really - most people think registering as a marrow donor is painful and complicated, when really all it takes is a couple of drops of blood."
Douglas' idea aims to catch potential donors when they are already bleeding, and give them all the necessary components to send their sample to a donor registry easily.
He set up the scheme with pharmaceutical company Help Remedies and international marrow donor registry DKMS, and registrants have tripled as a result.
Help Remedies create colour-coded medicine packets named after symptoms rather than ingredients, for example paracetamol labelled Help! I've Got a Headache.
The annual D&AD Awards honour exemplary design and advertising projects. One White Pencil is awarded each year to reward creativity for social good.
Other winning projects at this year's D&AD Awards, which took place earlier this week, include Thomas Heatherwick's Olympic Cauldron, BarberOsgerby's Olympic Torch and the new UK Government website.
Last year, Apple was named best design studio of the pasty fifty years at a special ceremony commemoration the awards' 5oth anniversary, while D&AD president Neville Brody described plans to remove creative subjects from the school curriculum in the UK as "insanity".
More medical design we've featured includes Christmas stockings filled with blood for donation and a range of pill containers by Yves Behar.
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