Visual Anatomy and Physiology by Martini, Nath, and Ober from Pearson Education is an incredibly unique textbook offering a revolutionary new way to learn complex A&P material. The content is divided into hundreds of modules, with each module being either a single page or a two page spread. The book contains no running text from one page to the next. It turns the pedagogical material “inside out” centering the rich illustrations and imagery of William Ober’s art, and conveying the necessary textual information through introductory paragraphs, labels on the art, detailed sidebars, and so on.
This style of conveying information proved an unique design challenge. The authors had to break the textual information down into small cohesive chunks, which then had to be placed on the page in a way that remained accessible and understandable for readers.
GDA developed several visual elements to help guide the reader through each spread, which remain consistent throughout the book and provide a general framework for each module. However, we still had to sit down with every single individual module to ensure that they all had the best possible layout for the information being presented.
