I went to the program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. There are four accredited programs in all of North America. Osborn: You can actually get a master’s degree in medical illustration. Green: Did you have to study molecular biology before you could illustrate it? Since I happen to be good with a pencil, and also with graphic design, I do that visually through artwork. At the end of the day, my core skill set is to be able to break complicated information down in a way that people can understand. There’s some room for educated guesses at different points depending on the project. There are a lot of things that we don’t know about what molecules look like or how they move, or how they interact with each other. I like the molecular better, because I think it's really interesting to try to visualize things that are too small to see. Gross means you can see it with the naked eye molecular is microscopic. Osborn: Medical illustrators broadly tend to either do gross anatomy, which in this case means the opposite of microscopic, and things are either microscopic or gross. Green: What influenced your desire to work on the molecular side instead of medical-legal or another other sub-field?
It’s really cool to be an illustrator, communicating this new science. Or option B, we can do a little DNA test and we can give you a medicine that we know will work for you specifically. We know that everybody responds to medicine differently, but pharmacogenomics says, “Hey, some of those different responses are in your genes.” The way this works is, for example, option A, you can take medicine that we know works for most people, which may or may not work for you. One of the biggest fields within that is called pharmacogenomics. Ever since the development of the Human Genome Project, that's kicked off this huge research push to see how our genes affect our health. Personalized medicine is really cool, cutting-edge science. I work for personalized-medicine labs that do DNA testing. I actually ended up focusing more on the molecular side of things. Even anaplastology, which is prosthetics, and surgical illustration are part of the broader medical-illustration umbrella.įor being such a small, niche field, there are so many different directions you can go. A sub-field of medical illustration is called medical-legal, which are the illustrations that are made to teach the jury about what the attorneys are trying to show about the case. Any visuals in research journals, medical-malpractice cases, personal-injury cases are a part of medical illustration. That’s certainly a part of it, but it's actually a very small part. The first thing people think of when they hear about the field is the illustrations from textbooks. Osborn: Broadly, medical illustrators just use visuals to communicate complicated science. Green: What exactly does a medical illustrator do? I clicked the link and that's been the plan ever since. One website had a “see related careers” tab, and listed medical illustration. At the end of the day, I'm an educator, not a counselor. I was reading about art therapy, but it wasn’t for me. I felt like I was forced to choose between one of those things, so I was trying to find a way to combine them. I knew that I really liked art, and was also good at traditional academic stuff. Osborn: I found out that the career even existed when I was a senior in high school taking a careers class. Green: What inspired you to become a medical illustrator? The interview that follows has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
#Medical illustrator salary series#
Osborn creates visuals that convey medical or scientific information about complicated subjects such as genetic testing.For The Atlantic’s series of interviews with American workers, I spoke with Osborn about her illustrations of DNA and what it’s like to belong to both the art and medical communities.
The median salary for a medical illustrator is higher than that of the average artist, ranging from $62,000 to $100,000, according to the Association of Medical Illustrators. Meredith Osborn, an illustrator in Columbus, Ohio, found a way to combine her background as an artist with a field that tends to bring in steady earnings: medicine.
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