Map Illustration: Postgraduate Medical Education

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Postgraduate Medical Education (PGME) office at the University of Alberta approached our team at the Medical Education office to help them with engaging new students in their program— virtually.

Medical students from across Canada apply to do their postgraduate medical residency program in Edmonton. These residents undertake courses and clinical learning programs at a variety of teaching hospitals and clinics across the city. 

Under normal circumstances, the learners would travel to Edmonton and receive a tour of the city and the clinical sites. However the pandemic completely upended this. The Postgraduate Medical Education Office was unsure of how to engage these students beyond Zoom meetings.

Our design team helped them to create a fun experience for students to make them feel like they could receive a special virtual greeting from their new university. 

We created two illustrated maps: an Edmonton map and a U of A campus map, that would work in conjunction with a Google Virtual Tour. This virtual tour would guide users along a curated set of Google Street views.

In this project, I collaborated with another designer and a visiting medical student to create a map of the city.

I created an illustration system for how the buildings and map would be portrayed. This utilized the style of vector minimalism in order to effectively portray the characteristics of Edmontonian landmarks and landscapes, while not creating too much complexity.

We followed the University of Alberta visual identity guidelines, utilizing DIN Pro as a typeface and their secondary colour palette scheme.