Diabetes by Design

Alex Durussel-Baker was on a plane taxiing down a runway when she found out she had Type 1 diabetes. She had been increasingly tired and had lost a lot of weight without meaning to, so had gone to a clinic where she lives in Edinburgh to get checked out. 

The nurse was reassuring – even jokingly envious of her weight loss – so Durussel-Baker did not change her plans to fly to New York City the next day for work. When her phone started ringing on the tarmac and the caller ID showed it was her doctor, she answered it. “Your blood sugar is through the roof. You need to get to hospital immediately,” said the doctor. When Durussel-Baker said she was not going to stop the flight from taking off, her doctor directed her to go straight to a hospital when she landed. She did and spent three days there, stabilizing.

The next few months of living with this life-limiting disease were confusing and isolating. 

“One of the biggest challenges is that not only are you learning to keep yourself alive, but you are also having to educate everyone around you,” she says. To combat misinformation, she started subverting famous designs to trick people into learning about diabetes.

Her gorgeous, thought-provoking posters have been displayed in galleries, clinic waiting rooms, and doctor’s offices, sparking conversations wherever they appear. She and her Diabetes by Design team have also created the Companion Cards, card decks pairing arresting imagery on one side with myth-busting explanations on the other (and a dash of humor) to make living with, or alongside, Type 1 diabetes feel less clinical and a lot more liveable.

Durussel-Baker transformed the pain of her lived experience into art, inviting community participation and co-creation with both clinicians and people living with Type 1 diabetes. In the lexicon of Rebel Health, she is a Solver and a Networker, using her talents to combat isolation and misinformation.

The Companion Cards are now live on Kickstarter! Learn more and be among the first to try them out.