Design Against the Death Penalty. death-is-not-justice.png The death penalty will be the next focus of Poster for Tomorrow, an international, collaborative poster project. The project will culminate on October 10, 2010, the world day against the death penalty coordinated by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. Posters are intended to be used by campaigners around the world and will be chosen in part for their reproducibility. The call for entries will open on April 10 with posters due in June. The project is run by 4tomorrow an independent, non-profit organization based in Paris that promotes active citizenship through the medium of design.
>  25 Feb 2010  | 
Always Wear Your Seatbelt. Stunning short video from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership. The whole ad is one a simple, slightly surreal scene, but touches a deep, emotional place — a similar place to the recent Google ad, another simple, powerful video that’s surreal in its own way. Nicely done. (Via)

Free Business Card Printing

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Fans of this blog, Next Day Flyers got in touch to offer free printing of 1,000 standard business cards to one lucky reader. These are glossy, full color, double-sided and would make a nice subversive palm card for a worthy cause. Next Day will include free ground shipping anywhere in the Continental U.S.

Next Day Flyers is an offset printing company that prints posters, flyers, and door hangers.

To enter, leave a comment here before February 28, 11:59PM EST. You must include your email address (though it will not show up publicly on the site) and you must be 18 or over to enter. On March 1, 2010 one commenter will be selected randomly.

Update 3/1:: Comments are now closed. Congratulations Brian!

Job Loss to Recovery. The Obama administration has posted an infographic to bolster claims that a year after its signing, the Recovery Act is working wonders. I get the point, but the y-axis label is confusing: wouldn’t negative job loss be the same as job creation? Regardless, I had a different picture of the recovery.
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When Fear Turns Graphic. swiss_minarets_poster.png“Switzerland stunned many Europeans, including not a few Swiss, when near the end of last year the country, by referendum, banned the building of minarets... A poster was widely cited as having galvanized votes for the Swiss measure but was also blamed for exacerbating hostility toward immigrants and instigating a media and legal circus.”
>  15 Feb 2010  | 

Three Little Words

Love

Artist Unknown. Via.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

>  14 Feb 2010  | 

Non-Profit Design

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How does one make design for social change sustainable and scalable? To build a replicable model and an enduring momentum?

As someone who’s worked with non-profits for many years, I’ve occasionally thought about perhaps starting a non-profit of my own as a way of institutionalizing some of my activism and work, ideas, research and outreach.

You might be surprised to learn that the largest charity in the world is not run by Bill and Melinda Gates, but is one that promotes and supports innovation in the field of architectural and interior design. That’s the Stichting INGKA Foundation, the Dutch Foundation that owns IKEA.

I have more modest ambitions and checking out the prior art, I found there’s no shortage of design-driven non-profit organizations. A search on GuideStar, a database of non-profit organizations, turns up over 5,000 search results matching the term “design.” In my survey of design-centric non-profit organizations here are some I thought were notable. This list is not exhaustive (for instance, it does not include some amazing educational institutions, museums, or documentary projects) and the examples here are all US-based, but take a look.

Continue reading "Non-Profit Design" »

>  12 Feb 2010  | 
Impact: Design for Social Change. This summer SVA will hold a six-week intensive workshop on design for social change in New York City. Sessions will focus on developing a collaborative project as well as your own non-client-based project — and funding it.

Tracking the Recovery

Howard Zinn

Yesterday, Howard Zinn passed away. A former World War II bombardier turned life-long activist, teacher, and radical historian, Zinn inspired and touched the lives of many. His watershed book A People’s History of the United States told the stories of atrocities and brutality, activism and organizing often ignored by mainstream accounts of US history. His anthology of primary sources, Voices of a People’s History of the United States led to the founding of a non-profit organization that holds dramatic readings of the works across the US: “By giving public expression to rebels, dissenters, and visionaries from our past—and present—VOICES seeks to educate and inspire a new generation working for social justice.”

Democracy Now! aired an hour-long tribute this morning. If you subscribe to Netflix, you can watch this documentary on his life and work. There’s more audio, video, and text at howardzinn.org.

>  28 Jan 2010  | 
Font Aid IV. fontaidiv.jpgThe Society of Typographic Aficionados is calling for designers to submit a black and white "ampersand" icon to build a collaborative font that will be sold to raise funds for relief efforts in Haiti. Previous Font Aid fonts have benefitted UNICEF to help war and disaster refugees, victims of the September 11 tragedies in the US, and relief efforts in countries affected by the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis.
26 Well Designed Websites that Help Haiti. Maps and large photos of suffering children are a frequent motif, but the sites do present a modest range of development approaches. I’m also interested in what’s happening at CrisisCommons, rapidly developing open source, community technology projects for humanitarian relief.
>  25 Jan 2010  |  ,
Chance for Peace. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953. Those Republican 5-star generals sure sound like a bunch of socialists.
>  24 Jan 2010  |  ,
Text "Haiti" to 90999. As of January 18, a cellphone fundraising campaign to support Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti had raised $22 million, smashing all previous mobile giving records. The initiative is a partnership between the Red Cross, the US State Depatment and the mGive Foundation. Customers of participating wireless carriers can text message "HAITI" to 90999 to make a $10 donation. The State Department is posting periodic updates about the campaign on their blog and Twitter stream.
The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV. His call for economic and human rights, his push to redistribute wealth and power, his activism against the Vietnam War. “True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
>  18 Jan 2010  | 


More? See January’s archives.
Or December’s.