ALR designletter [6.2]
[01] [02] [03] [04] [05] [06] [07] [08] [09] [10] [11][12][13]
Welcome to another issue of the ALR Designletter. As always we welcome your comments, suggestions, criticism and/or praise. Thanks for reading.
Noah Scalin, president
ALR design
socially conscious graphic design
http://www.ALRdesign.com
--
[01] ALR News
The ALR blog has nearly 100 entries after only 3 months online! If you like what you read here, be sure to check out the blog http://www.alrdesign.com/blog. It’s updated nearly every weekday with lots of stuff that doesn’t make it into the Designletter.
ALR founder, Noah Scalin will be giving a workshop on designers working with nonprofits and nonprofits working with designers April 12th in Richmond, VA at C3, the Creative Change Center. Folks in the area interested in attending should visit http://www.c3va.org for more information.
4 of ALR’s designs appear in the recent publication World Business Cards Today from PIE Books, Japan http://www.piebooks.com/.
[02] IDEAS + ACTION
Poor little Marla Robbins. This 7th grader is under the impression that one day she can be a United States Senator. When she wrote a “what I want to be when I grow up” essay saying so, her teacher flunked her. Maybe it was the right thing to do. After all, only 14 of the Senate’s 100 seats are filled by women, what was the kid thinking, right? Serve Marketing, a non-profit advertising and marketing firm from Milwaukee, has designed fake news stories like this one for their Close the Gap campaign to call attention to gender inequities in hiring. You can print out the files and post them in the office or buy ad space and run them in a publication. Download yours at http://closethegap.org/ (and learn the names of our 14 woman senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm).
--
Turn your ideas into action. With an eye to sustainable methods, the paper goods company Sappi already shows it cares about the environment. But their Sappi Ideas that Matter program shows that they care about designers, too. The company has set aside $1 million to distribute to designers who propose programs that help social causes or the environment. Entries are due May 31. You can download an application at http://www.sappi.com/SappiWeb/Initiatives/Sappi+Ideas+that+Matter/
[03] WAR + PEACE
The bumper stickers may say “these colors don’t run,” but a new poll suggests they wouldn’t mind backing away slowly, either. A new Zogby poll shows that 72% of the troops on the ground in Iraq think the army should be out of the country within the year. Of the 944 troops polled, 42% aren’t sure of their mission in Iraq and 85% think they were sent to “retaliate for Saddam’s roll in the Sept. 11 attacks.” (The former Iraqi leader’s relationship to al Qaeda is, of course, still a topic of some debate.) Check out this article about the poll in Stars and Stripes, a niche publication aimed at military families at http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=34538&archive=true.
--
For 25-years, Peace Brigades International has been doing something by just standing there. The group sends volunteers to accompany activists threatened by violence in Colombia, Guatemala, Indonesia, Mexico and Nepal so perpetrators of human rights violations know the world is watching. PBI was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. See how you can get involved at http://peacebrigades.org/.
[04] DESIGN
Posters on parade. The Graphic Imperative: International Posters for Peace, Social Justice and the Environment 1965-2005 will be touring the east coast with a retrospective exhibit of some of the most moving posters that send messages about peace, social justice and the environment. If you’re not going to be in that part of the United States any time soon, you can still see the collection online at http://www.thegraphicimperative.org/. Look for classic work by Milton Glaser and some new favorites like a poster lamenting the Bosnia’s ethnic divisions by showing a violin with its bow, bridge and body split apart.
[05] ART
Delete and de-letter. Check out Delete! an Austrian project where artists Rainer Dempf and Christoph Steinbrener successfully blocked out all the commercial street images and lettering from a section of Vienna for two weeks. The artists say they wanted to let the built-space interact more smoothly with urban life, but also wanted to call attention to the way the raw shapes of the signs played into the environment. Visit http://www.steinbrener-dempf.com/ to see the project. Click billboard in the upper-left hand part of the image for English commentary.
[06] ENERGY
Poop power. Within the next few months San Francisco will implement a pilot program to make electricity out of dog droppings. The city will install biodegradable bags and special waste receptacles to collect them in a park with heavy dog traffic. Next, bacteria living in a “methane digester” will digest the poop and create methane gas as a by-product that can be used to create electricity. Read more at http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/02/22/dog.waste.power.ap/http:/ and http://tinyurl.com/hzsqv.
[07] HEALTH
Health care cure. If you’re an artist or freelancer, your soul may be free but your health care ain’t. But by pooling your organization with other small groups, together you can become eligible for health benefits you couldn’t get on your own. Fractured Atlas is one organization that artists and organizations can join to get access to health care. Learn more at http://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/quickstart/healthcare.
[08] SAFETY
Putting your kid in an SUV is like having a protective ball of steel to deflect collisions, or so the reasoning goes. But balls, even protective steel ones, roll. A study released this year shows that SUV roll rates counter any safety benefits being the biggest car on the road might offer. Newer SUV models are starting to add new safety features like roll-sensing airbags and electronic stability controls, but they may never regain the benefit that conventional wisdom suggests bigger is better. Read more at http://www.forbes.com/2006/01/04/suv-danger-children-cx_gl_0104autofacescan06.html.
[09] ENTERTAINMENT
Don’t hate video games, create with video games. Italian artists and programmers at Molleindustria are addressing labor and gender issues with their politically charged online games. At http://www.molleindustria.org/ you can play games like Tamatipico where you get to control the daily activities of your own day laborer or the McDonald’s video game where you can participate in the whole process from herding the cattle all the way to running the franchise. Over at the Persuasive Games site (http://www.persuasivegames.com/) you can battle the motivational challenges in the daily life of Kinko’s employees. Happy gaming!
[10] MEDIA
Free the press. In the United States we often talk about press saturation from a news media gone wild, but many countries don’t have any press freedom at all. Reporters Without Borders serves many functions. Like Amnesty International, it acts as a rallying point for readers to sign online petitions for the release of journalists unfairly jailed and gives space for articles and publications that have been banned in their own country. The organization also lends out bullet-proof vests marked “PRESS” for reporters covering war-zones. Keep an eye out for their annual report on the state of world journalism to mark World Press Freedom Day on May 3. Check it out at http://www.rsf.org/.
[11] SHOPPING
How clean is your laundry? Even something as simple as a t-shirt can have far-reaching environmental and economic relationships that you might not agree with. Better thinking brand consultants have started a project to find ways to eliminate all the harmful side-effects of producing a t-shirt. You can help brainstorm online, or just watch their progress at http://www.betterthinking.co.uk/perfect/.
--
Roses are romantic, right? Next time you stop and smell ‘em, see if you can pick out the 127 different pesticides Colombian workers are exposed to while they cultivate plants for cut flowers. Nearly half of the flowers sold in the U.S. come from Colombia, but two-thirds of the workers who grow them suffer from serious health problems caused by their jobs. Since American shoppers buy so many flowers, they’re in a position to demand better conditions for those workers. See what you can do at the International Labor Rights Fund’s Fairness in Flowers Campaign at http://www.laborrights.org/projects/flowers_index.htm.
[12] LEXICON
Badware-n.--innocent-looking internet download that leads to computer slowdown, identity theft and other malicious spyware, adware and malware. Antonym-StopBadware http://stopbadware.org/ is a nonprofit organization that informs people about how to avoid or reverse the effects of badware and collects people’s stories so it can act as a clearinghouse of badware information.
[13] NOSH
PETA’s going corporate? That’s right, for the past decade PETA has been buying up stock in some of the company’s whose practices they’d most like to see change. As part-owners in those companies, they’re allowed to complain from the inside. PETA has convinced the grocery chain Safeway to implement an animal welfare advisory committee and is coordinating shareholder protest campaigns in pharmaceutical and pet food producers. Read more at http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=100973&ran=130416.
And for more on shareholder activism in general check out http://www.foe.org/international/shareholder/
>>
The ALR Designletter is a semi-regular update on the activities at Another Limited Rebellion design, the world of socially conscious design, and beyond. You are on this list because you have worked with, contacted, or have a personal connection to ALR design. The names on this mailing list will never be sold or given away. If you no longer wish to be on this list, just respond with "REMOVE" in the subject section and there will be no hard feelings. Back issues can be found on our web site in the ISSUES section.
close