Client study - Intersurgical

Intersurgical is one of the world's leading manufacturers of Single Use Breathing Systems. Relatively unknown by the general public, this company has several products in almost all UK hospitals plus many in most other parts of the world. You will have regularly seen an Intersurgical product without realising. Every time you see someone wearing a clear facemask on television- whether soap opera, drama or documentary- the chances are it is an Intersurgical mask.

I worked for Intersurgical for many happy years. I left to move on to another job and a couple of years later I returned to Intersurgical in a contracting capacity.
While there I undertook many varied tasks. One of these was the unified complete product catalogue. Up until then products had different literature based on their group. The complete catalogue combined all one thousand or so products in one A4 item.
The design team consisted of three people including myself. We were great friends and worked closely together on all jobs and many pieces were a collaborative effort.

Complete product catalogue
The first step in creating a catalogue of this size was to gather the information that needed to be included. Each product group had a specialist who was an expert in that particular field. I conferred with them, establishing what items should be in the catalogue and the most up to date information and figures for those products. Some products may be new, some may be due to be phased out and some may not be sold in certain countries. This needed to be repeated for each department and each product specialist.
Once all the data was sorted the catalogue needed to be laid out. Intersurgical already has a corporate style so this had to be taken into account while designing the catalogue.
The different product groups had a colour associated with them. This was critical in the design process to separate the catalogue into sections to allow users to find what they need easily and quickly. Users finding the section they need was only half the issue. A contents page would need to be included breaking the product groups down into smaller sections. An index would also be generated to allow people who knew exactly what they were after to pin-point the page they need.
Taking the above into account, a first draft was released. The index and contents were usually missing at this stage as there is a high likelyhood that there would be changes, maybe a product would be dropped or order re-arranged for whatever reason even, occasionally, a typo. The cross referencing of the index and contents sections after changes would add to the time needed to work on the catalogue so they were left until the very end. The initial draft would go to the various departmental specialists to be checked for accuracy and the Marketing Director to ensure they were happy with everything. Once it had done its tour of the company any changes that needed dealing with would be corrected. A final draft would be issued to be signed off by each of the product specialists to ensure they were happy with all the information listed.
I would then run the artwork through a 'pre-flight' check. This is to ensure that when it went to press it would be printed correctly. Once I was happy with this it would be sent to the printer who would return a proof to us. The proof is an accurate representation of what we could expect to see in the final product. This would be checked over for any technical inaccuracies or printing glitches and then signed-off.

The project was a great success. The catalogue was translated into many languages. Translation was done either through a translating agency or staff in distributor companies in the relevant countries. I was involved in many of the foreign versions. The process was similar to the English as, as mentioned earlier, some products are not sold in the UK. Likewise some UK products are not used by some overseas medical practitioners. The catalogued was updated and reissued over time with the layout and design changing to stay cutting edge.
When I left the company to move to Leeds we had just released UK Issue 7.

Product information sheet
The product information sheet is a smaller version of the complete catalogue giving details of a specific product or range. These are mainly used for exhibitions or customers who want selective information. This enables Intersurgical to give a good level of information without the cost of sending out a full catalogue.

Advertising
Intersurgical frequently advertised in the major industry magazines often with prominent positioning like back or inside covers.
Occasionally adverts were created for foreign markets too. Intersurgical have subsiduaries in many areas around the world and often the UK headquarters would supply promotional material.

Product and technical illustration
Product illustrations were done for two reasons. In the first instance they are used in the literature to show the product itself. Often these are augmented with actual product photographs. The reason illustrations are used is they can be far clearer than photographs especially for the modular style of products that Intersurgical produce.
The other reason illustrations are used is for the creation of usage instructions. All of the products are shipped with some form of instructional documentaion. Some products are simple and only require technical data about airflow or similar. Others were more complicated and would need some form of instruction for assembly or use.
Working with illustrations allows a clearer view of specific parts of the item. Clarity is always of paramount concern when working in the medical industry.

Work undertaken while personally employed by this company