Engagement at the intersection of art + science
Hi, I’m Vanessa Ruiz, a product designer, and creative director helping digital health companies conceptualize and craft experiences that engage people in their health and care. As a trained medical illustrator, I founded Street Anatomy in 2007 to showcase human anatomy in contemporary art and gave a TEDMED talk on it that’s reached over 1.6 million views.
View my LinkedIn profile to learn more. Scroll on to see my work!
Creative Direction / Website Design / Video Editing
Voices of Periods: Breaking Down Stigma
Directed and enabled an un-branded awareness initiative to normalize period talk and break down stigma, shame, taboo, and confusion surrounding period health.
Case study coming soon...
Brand Visual Identity / Website Strategy & Design
Carallel: Empowering Caregivers
Showcasing the expertise and unique vantage point of a digital health startup with a mission to make caregiving easier through comprehensive and compassionate guidance tailored to individual needs.
Case study coming soon...
Creative Direction / Product Strategy / UX & Visual Design
Emmi: Patient Engagement & Experience
Creatively guiding award-winning animated content and experiences that nurture healthy behaviors and actions that empathetically align with a patient's clinical care journey.
Science Storytelling
I have a passion for igniting curiosity and wonder in health and medicine through art, storytelling, and visual metaphor.
The Spellbinding Art of Human Anatomy
I had the honor of speaking at TEDMED, the independent health and medicine edition of the world-famous TED conference, dedicated to “ideas worth spreading.”
There I took the audience on an illustrated journey of human anatomical art over the centuries, sharing captivating images that bring this visual science—and the contemporary artists inspired by it—to life.
TED featured the talk reaching international audiences with more than 1.6M views and 23 language translations to date.
Why is Pneumonia So Dangerous?
In collaboration with my colleague, Eve Gaus, and the team at TED-Ed, we brought an educational explainer video to life about the timely topic of pneumonia. While working with TED-Ed, we conducted research, scripted, and collaborated with the animator and sound engineer to explain how pneumonia attacks the lungs through visual metaphor.
The animation is translated into 21 languages with more than 1.5M views to date.
UX & Visual Design Projects
From designing intuitive iOS apps to bold UI displays for industrial vehicles to an interactive medical animation, here is a selection of UX & visual design projects from my 15+ year career.