New Work: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Kit Hinrichs and Belle How in San Francisco have redesigned Discoveries, a semi-annual publication of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the largest non-profit academic hospital in the United States. Pentagram’s challenge was to invigorate and redefine the magazine’s graphic and editorial viewpoint to better articulate the major research initiatives of the institution and simultaneously make it more compelling, flexible and distinctive to its audience.
While Cedars-Sinai has a great reputation as a world-class medical center, it is less well known as an academic and research center. Discoveries’ role is to raise awareness of the institution’s cutting-edge research and technology in a way that heralds the importance of its impact on patient care and, ultimately, to help generate funding.
To engage the reader, the visual style and editorial pacing of the publication needed to become more strategic. The redesign reflects the strength and confidence of the hospital and its approach to the study and practice of medicine. It uses a combination of conceptual photography and illustration that sets Discoveries apart from other traditional research publications. Once reorganized with featured articles, established columns, and an editorial pacing that allows the stories more room to breathe, the underlying mission of Cedars-Sinai could come to the forefront.
Discoveries has evolved from being an in-house, internally focused trade journal into an outwardly focused magazine that can compete with other mainstream publications based on the quality of its stories and compelling design.
