CDC Yellow Book 2024

The CDC Yellow Book is the United States government's leading resource for international travel health guidance — the reference clinicians open before advising a patient. The 2024 edition needed an identity and a web experience that could hold hundreds of pages of guidance and dozens of contributing authors together, for a reader who is often skimming between appointments.

• Authority and approachability at the same time — it has to look federal and read human.
• Section 508 compliance is not optional on a federal property, so accessibility had to shape type and color decisions from the start rather than be audited at the end.
• Consistency across a decentralized organization and dozens of contributing authors who would never open a brand book unless it was genuinely easy to use.

1. Designed the identity first. The book's logo and visual system, built to read authoritative and human at once — federal enough to trust, plain enough to use.
2. Set the type and color system. A hierarchy that survives dense clinical content, so a reader scanning for a dosage finds it and a reader going cover to cover isn't punished.
3. Built accessibility into the palette. Every pairing cleared contrast requirements before it entered the system, so nobody downstream had to make that call on a deadline.
4. Restructured the web experience. Reorganized page architecture around how clinicians actually search: destination, condition, then detail.
5. Extended it across touchpoints. Website banners, collateral and supporting assets, all from one system.

• 23% increase in unique page visits — 1.3 million within three months of launch.
• 2.52M+ visits in six months, against the previous edition.
• Recognized with the CDC Excellence in Communications Award.
• Section 508 compliance met across print and digital, with no post-launch remediation.