Print Booklet
Every Drop Counts:A Breastfeeding Guide for You and Your Family
A 50-page breastfeeding guide, rebuilt with exhausted new parents in mind.
The Government of New Brunswick’s Department of Health had an existing breastfeeding guide distributed to new parents navigating one of the most demanding periods of their lives. When I received it, the problems were clear: flat hierarchy, condensed typography that punished you for trying to read it, a visual presence so clinical and dated it felt untrustworthy.
the user
New parents and the caregivers supporting them. Exhausted, anxious people who need to find one specific piece of information as fast as possible, and get back to their baby.
Design for the worst moment, not the best.
The whole guide was rebuilt around how it holds up when the person using it is tired, stressed or overwhelmed. I audited the existing document before touching anything. I needed to understand exactly what was or wasn’t working and why. It all pointed to one issue: the guide wasn’t designed for the person using it.
Typographic hierarchy that does the work
I pushed for larger heading sizes and established a consistent typographic hierarchy throughout. The goal was that any user, on any page, could immediately orient themselves. Understanding section, subsection, and body content without conscious effort is an important aspect of navigation.
A visual language that felt human
The full rebrand included a new colour palette, updated styling and a warmer tone. The original felt clinical, institutional and old. The redesign needed to feel like it was on the user’s side. Warmth and approachability weren’t aesthetic choices, they were functional ones. A parent who trusts the document is a parent who reads it.
Turning a table of contents into a real navigation system
I designed a colour-coded tab system along the top edge of each page that mapped directly back to a corresponding visual element on the table of contents. A reader could orient themselves from the TOC then find their place anywhere in the document at a glance, without hunting for a page number. It turned a passive reference tool into an active navigation system. Nobody will notice it. That’s the point.
Maintaining consistency across two separate documents
The guide was produced as two separate documents, English and French, and both needed to feel like the same publication. Every layout decision had to hold across both versions while accounting for the fact that French copy consistently runs longer than English. A layout that worked in the English version could easily break in French if I hadn’t built that flexibility in from the start. Maintaining visual balance and consistency across both simultaneously was a constant that ran through every page of the project.
The redesigned guide was approved and distributed to new parents across New Brunswick in both print and digital PDF formats. The print order for this edition was double that of previous years. More copies ordered means more parents reached. That’s the metric that mattered.
2x
the print order of previous years
AA
WCAG 2.1 contrast across the palette
EN/FR
two documents held to one system
“It feels refreshing, and for the first time the guide actually feels like something a new parent would want to pick up.”
— Creative Director, Government of New Brunswick
The best UX decisions are often the ones users never notice. Design for the worst moment, and the best moment takes care of itself.
