work

Still one of our favorite apps in the App Store, Medicá was built over the course of a month for TEDMed 2010.

Designed by @radical media, Medicá provides users with the ability to browse 500 years of medical illustration in stunningly high resolution.

To present the detailed illustrations featured in the app, each page was photographed with a Gigapixel camera. Post-production images were supplied to the Caravan team to format for the app. We devised a series of Photoshop and Applescript scripts which converted the images into tiles at different resolutions.

As the user flips through the pages of ancient texts, the app discreetly swaps out tiles at different resolution. The result is a captivating experience, where the user can see the paper texture and pen strokes on 500 year old pages.

The sheer breadth of content provided another challenge. How does one organize 500 years of medical history that spans civilizations? More than one way to consume the content was essential. We devised a series of metadata properties which could be used to sort the individual pages: historical trends and themes, subjects, dates, etc.

Available in the App Store