These Alice-inspired images were created for Armadillo Medical Communications to illustrate an evolutionary hypothesis known as ’The Red Queen Effect’ Its name is of course inspired by the Red Queen’s race in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. The hypothesis refers to the constant evolutionary arms-race between competing species.
Penny MacDuff, Director of Armadillo:
“I have no doubt that Matt’s illustrations of concept helped us to marry a complex theory with clinical data as well as creating an unforgettable series of images that people still use and refer to.
Our client was looking for a novel and engaging way to present scientific and clinical data to an international medical professional audience and we chose this concept of constant evolution and the race for a medical education lecture series: The battle between our immune system and treatments versus the virus.
We engaged our faculty to develop case histories to depict this battle, each to represent a character from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and asked Matt to capture their features and characteristics in developing caricatures to illustrate the lectures.
The bespoke illustrations were eye catching and created a lot of interest and conversation – yet they were relevant, well executed and therefore successful and acceptable for the medical arena. We needed a careful balance between visually impact and conceptual integrity – essentially not dumbing down because it’s an intellectually demanding audience. The lecture series is still referred to by those that attended as innovative, eye-catching and educational.
Matt captured the brief and give us back exactly what we wanted.”
by Ali Kay, 2010
