It’s a design emergency. Road trauma is the number one cause of death and injury for children in every country of the world. And crashes disproportionately affect the poor with 9 out of 10 deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries.

While the engineers huddle over traffic and urban planning, there’s one monster big enough for the educational front.

Your lovable pal Grover has taken on the role of Global Road Safety Ambassador in support of the United Nations’s Decade of Action for Road Safety.

Ambassador Grover stars in a series of PSA’s developed by Sesame Workshop and the Global Road Safety Partnership to accompany a Road Safety Education Framework for educators, parents, and communities.

Inspired by the success of the red ribbon for HIV/AIDS and the white band against global poverty, the Decade of Action group is also promoting a yellow Road Safety Tag to increase awareness of the issue. Sports figures, celebrities, and politicians have been spotted wearing the tag.

I crowdsourced a crowd scene for a May Day poster using Mechanical Turk, Facebook and Twitter friends inviting them to draw a robot holding up a sign. In just five days, I assembled a protest scene with 250 unique characters. It was great fun. Here are the results in color and black and white.

Click below for high resolution versions.

Continue reading "Crowdsourced Poster for May Day" »

Leigh Vogel, a professional photographer, working with the Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown has published an excellent little primer on the use of photography by NGOs:

Images can play a vital role in how effectively messages can reach various audiences. When images accompany text or a story, which element makes the difference in engaging the reader or viewer? Which motivates one to act? Using images strategically in external and internal communications planning and execution can be a vital component of success for an organization.

In addition to “reading” photos, topics include legal rights, photo sharing and distribution, and managing your archive.

Page through below or download as a PDF. (via)

Order a hoodie at cost from Spreadshirt.

Or download a printable PDF poster in black or white.

If you think culture eats strategy for lunch, Larry Lessig adds some historical context to that whole cultural decline at Goldman Sachs thing: structure eats culture.

Since September 11, 2011, the Department of Homeland Security has doled out between $30 and $40 billion to state and local law enforcement and other first responders for weapons, surveillance networks, tanks, drones, and submarines to police U.S. citizens in the U.S.

The Washington Post has state-by-state database of projects, but this piece by Stephan Salisbury on the sweeping militarization of local law enforcement puts it into perspective:

“So much money has gone into armoring and arming local law-enforcement since 9/11 that the federal government could have rebuilt post-Katrina New Orleans five times over and had enough money left in the kitty to provide job training and housing for every one of the record 41,000-plus homeless people in New York City. It could have added in the growing population of 15,000 homeless in Philadelphia, my hometown, and still have had money to spare. Add disintegrating Detroit, Newark, and Camden to the list. Throw in some crumbling bridges and roads, too.”

It’s not just policing, policy, and policy making that have changed. And its not just another transfer of wealth from tax payers to defense contractors and their shareholders. Driven by fear, cash, and “national security,” America is being physically redesigned.

The Latina art collective fulana produced the image above to satirize an ad campaign on the NYC subway.

Occuprint, a volunteer-run collaborative project that curates, collects, prints and distributes posters and graphics produced by and for the global Occupy movement.

The group is running a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a massive print run of posters, to distribute them anywhere there are #occupy supporters, and to print a limited edition portfolio of screen printed images, which will ultimately live in the permanent collections of museums, libraries, and other arts institutions.

I’m very late posting this and the funding goal has been reached, but you can still help fund an even wider print run and receive some posters and stickers for yourself. Check the project video below:

One of the first posters to be screen printed was my own riot cop image, which is an incredible honor. Click through for a video of the printing in action.

There are two places where plastic goes in New Jersey.

Damon Rich takes it to the bottom line and helps launch Newark's recycling campaign at City Hall in style with a lovely infographic poster "Where Newark's Garbage Goes."

Happy birthday Angela Davis. The quote is from this talk of hers on how change happens. If inclined you can download the image as a PDF.