Two Lifeology members collaborated and created one of the two winning graphics for an International Women’s Day-themed challenge hosted by Cochrane and Lifeology. Go Lifeology community and collaboration!
For International Women’s Day (IWD) on March 8th, Cochrane US hosted several free events, including an art and graphic challenge with Lifeology to illustrate the theme of IWD for 2022: #BreakTheBias. The art or graphic had to be related to healthcare and/or evidence synthesis. The challenge ran from early February until the day before IWD, and Cochrane chose the winning designs.
Three diverse women strike the #BreakTheBias pose; the women are stacked on top of one another so their crossed arms form a double helix. The remaining DNA strands are filled in with science-themed doodles.
Two Lifeology members, Abbey Morris and Lina Cellante, created one of the two winning graphics for the challenge! Their work will soon be featured on mugs and tote bags available in the Cochrane Store. Keep reading to learn more about their collaboration and creation process for the graphic.
A large part of Lifeology outside of our health and science courses and SciComm program is our SciComm and SciArt community. We have a Slack workspace for networking, advice, community chats and more for artists, scientists, and communicators alike. We have several channels, including one called #i-need-an-artist. This channel is where Lifeology team members or external folks can post in the channel with a specific need for an artist, and artists can choose to put their name and portfolio into the running for that posted need.
And that’s where the collaboration originated for Abbey and Lina. Lina had seen the Cochrane/Lifeology challenge circling, and she had the idea for the graphic–but she needed the skills of an artist to bring it to life. She posted in the #i-need-an-artist channel to see if anyone would be interested in collaborating with her for the challenge, and Abbey answered the call. Together, they created an amazing–winning–graphic. We love seeing Lifeology community member collaborations come to life!
From the Creators:
“It all started with a post on i-need-an-artist Slack channel. The concept of the graphic was already in my mind, built piece by piece while reading the Cochrane guidelines for the International women’s day challenge. In my post, I specifically wrote that I needed help to develop my idea but I also underlined how that could be an occasion to collaborate, interact with new people and also be showcased a bit which is fundamental for an illustrator or a wannabe illustrator. Abbey replied quite soon and we started chatting in private. She was happy to help so I described my idea and sent her a (very ugly!) draft I made on paper and then shot by phone. We worked asynchronous since she is in Canada and I am in Italy! It was her idea for the science-themed articles constituting the helix. The day after she sent me a couple of drafts and we agreed on the colour choice then she sent the email for submitting the graphic ccing me. A couple of days later Cochrane sent us an email saying we won the challenge and that our graphic will be printed on different items on sale on Cochrane webshop. It was great, easy and interesting working with Abbey despite the different time zones and the several kilometers between us!” -Lina
“It was great working with Lina! She had the concept idea and was brave enough to put out a call looking for an artist. I initially saw the announcement for the competition but didn’t have an idea for what to create. When I saw Lina’s message, I reached out right away and thought it would be fun to collaborate. When she told me she wanted to have 3 female figures doing the “Break the Bias pose” while intersecting to look like DNA, I knew exactly what she meant and thought it was a great idea. I wanted to make sure that the women we included in the drawing all came from different backgrounds.” – Abbey
