Hope For Haiti Poster Project

Print a poster at Olio for The Haiti Poster Project

In an effort to raise $1 000 000 for Doctors Without Borders, the HAITI POSTER PROJECT seek limited edition sets of posters from artists, designers and design firms from around the world to be sold online.

If you’ve yet to make a donation or aren’t able to, Olio will be donating screenprinting equipment, studio time & printing help to any Victoria artists willing to produce a print for the project – PLEASE take advantage of this, as this is a hugely worthwhile project. The project concept is simple – As designers, we have the collective ability to do what we love, AND to create a difference. THE HAITI POSTER PROJECT has been conceived as a collective effort by the design community to unite and effect change through our work.  In order for this project to be successful, we are counting on designer participation.

Commit to having a print ready by March 5th and Olio will donate the studio time, films, screens, printing supplies and shipping costs needed to make it happen.  You need to supply your own paper & ink, though that’s it.

Time is VERY pressing – get in touch with Olio (admin@oliocooperative.ca) ASAP.  This is a very awesome opportunity and you would be foolish to sit it out.

Visit: The Haiti Poster Project site

THE HAITI POSTER PROJECT seeks limited edition sets of posters from artists, designers and design firms from around the world. The donated posters will be sold online to raise money for Doctors Without Borders. As designers, we have the collective ability to do what we love, AND to create a difference. THE HAITI POSTER PROJECT has been conceived as a collective effort by the design community to unite and effect change through our work. In order for this project to be successful, we are counting on designer participation. Our goal is to raise at least:

DETAILS:

• DEADLINE: March 15th. Submissions after March 15th will also be accepted, but given the timeliness of the situation, we strongly encourage designers to meet this deadline.
• Posters should be specific to the earthquake in Haiti or THE HAITI POSTER PROJECT.
• The posters may be graphic or typographic.
• The posters should be signed and numbered editions in quantities of 25 to 100. The posters should not be one-offs.
• Minimum size is 11‚Äù x 17‚Äù. (Ideal size: 18‚Äù x 24‚Äù.) Poster can be produced by litho, digital or silk-screen print.
• Posters may include credits for vendors who have donated supplies or services, but please keep them small and unobtrusive.
• Artists will be responsible for designing, printing, and delivering the posters to HAITI POSTER PROJECT. Although we would like to print them, we don‚Äôt have the resources to coordinate all of the printing ourselves.
• We encourage international submissions.
• All submissions will become property of THE HAITI POSTER PROJECT, and will be sold to raise funds for the Doctors Without Borders earthquake disaster relief effort. Several posters from each donated set will be retained for possible future exhibition or publication.
• When you‚Äôve finished your design, please email a PDF or JPEG of finished poster for the site to: info@thehaitiposterproject.com (At least 380px x 480px, please.) Please also include the title of the poster, your name (as you‚Äôd like it to appear) and a short paragraph about you and your poster.
• The March 15th deadline is flexible. With the Hurricane Poster Project in 2005, we were receiving posters six months after the deadline. Please be prompt. More importantly ‚Äî Please participate.
• The Haiti Poster Project is not a juried show. All submissions will be posted, provided they are specific to Haiti or the Haiti Poster Project. The end goal: Raise money for earthquake victims in Haiti. If you design a poster, we will include it in the project. The Hurricane Poster Project had 185 famous and not-so-famous contributors, but the end result was a beautiful cross-section of the design community as a whole.

MORE INFORMATION

If you have questions or need more information, please contact: Leif Steiner — leif.steiner@thehaitiposterproject.com Josh Higgins — josh.higgins@thehaitiposterproject.com

Please ship poster submissions to: Haiti Poster Project, c/o Merch Lackey, Inc. 8510 Production Ave. San Diego, CA 92121 USA

PLEASE PACKAGE WELL. DAMAGED POSTERS ARE HARD TO SELL Click here to download a pdf of this page

Looking for a printer? Check your local area. Many printers will give a discount if you ask.

Additionally, here are two printers who have offered to give reduced prices for participants of The Haiti Poster Project.

LEIF STEINER is the founder and creative director of Moxie Sozo, a nationally-known design and advertising agency located in Boulder, Colorado. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Moxie Sozo organized the HURRICANE POSTER PROJECT, a collaboration of artists and designers from around the world to help raise money for the victims. Over 180 different limited-edition series of posters were produced, raising about $50,000. Many of the posters won major design awards, and the effort was profiled in numerous publications. Exhibitions of the show appeared around the country and in Europe. Additionally, many of the posters are now in permanent collections of several major museums, including the Library of Congress and the Louvre.

JOSH HIGGINS is a creative director in San Diego CA, and the organizer of the 2007 SO-CAL FIRE POSTER PROJECT. After seeing wildfires burn through Southern California in the fall of 2007, Josh enlisted designers and artists around the globe to help. Higgins, who was a contributing artist to the post-Katrina Hurricane Poster Project, founded the So-Cal Fire Poster Project to raise money for victims in southern California. Several of the projects posters have won design awards from Communication Arts, HOW, Print and Step Magazine. The Project was also featured on NBC, FOX, Metropolis Magazine, Communication Arts and California Home and Style. To date the project has raised thousands of dollars and continues to be a relief fund source for fire victims 2 and a half years later.

A New Look at Colour through Greyscale Eyes

Seeing Colour

Miguel Neiva is a designer from Portugal who has created a system which helps people who are colour blind to decipher colour.

When beginning his thesis dissertation in design and marketing at the University of Minho, Miguel Neiva was initially focused solely on the textile industry. Upon further research, Miguel realised that little is done in this industry to alleviate the constraints of colourblind individuals.

He then decided then to further explore the concept of 'inclusion' beyond his thesis and develop a complete coding system for the colourblind. Now the first fully licensed design of its kind, ColorAdd® has become a challenging and motivating project for the designer, who is currently working with a multidisciplinary team in Portugal to expand its reach.

About colour blindness

A colour vision deficiency, colour blindness is the inability to perceive differences between some of the colours that other can distinguish. Colour blindness is an inherited deficiency with no cure.

There are several types of colorblindness, the rarest being Monochromacy, which affects the perception of every color, resulting in a black and white or grey shaded vision. The most common type of color blindness is Trichromacy, which results in skewed interpretation of different shades of color. While a person with a normal vision may see up to 30000 colors, a colourblind person has his or her visual capability limited to 500 to 800 colours.

The vast majority of colourblind people have normal vision. However, this deficiency makes it impossible for those affected to perform certain everyday social and professional tasks.

Project background

Based on the notion of 'inclusion', ColorAdd® is a monochromatic graphic code that allows colourblind users  - representing about 10% of the world's population - to identify colors in situations where it is the determining factor in the decision-making, without dependence on third parties nor the discomfort of uncertainty.

The first phase of Miguel's project required much bibliographic research to define and understand colour blindness, its varieties and all the visual consequences of those affected. Furthermore, he approached medical experts to ulitise their experience in this field.

A study was conducted on a sample of colourblind people to identify their main difficulties concerning their colour blindness and the ways and methods used by them to lessen and overcome these obstacles. The results of the survey of 146 individuals showed the necessity of such a colour identification tool. 90% of the colorblind are forced to request assistance when buying clothes, more than 40% have felt a level of difficulty in social integration, and almost have 50% felt the embarrassment of choosing clothing that may not be the best. It is hard to imagine the psychological discomfort experienced upon a wrong interpretation of colors.

Colour is a key tool used healthcare, educational, transportation, computer and directional systems worldwide. Considering this, it is clear that a design brief, developed not for designers but for society in general, is indeed a significant contribution to social inclusion.

The colour code

The message of other coded systems, such as road signs, is easily read by colourblind and non-colourblind individuals alike. Thus, form was used to constitute the basis and support the construction of the representation of colour.

Given the universality of the colour system, with primary colours and secondary colours, this concept was adopted as the basis for the ColorAdd® system. Using primary colours, represented through simple symbols, the system was constructed through a process of logical association and direct comprehension. This makes understanding it very easy and allows a quick integration into the 'visual vocabulary' of the user, without having to memorise the symbols individually.

Its form allows the individual to simply connect the colours and their subsequent divisions with other colours through mixing simple forms combined with elementary chromatic combinations.

The system uses primary colours (CMYK), rather than the light colours (RGB) as the basis of the system. Each primary colour is associated to three forms representing blue (cyan), yellow and red (magenta).

The secondary colours can be formed using the basic forms as if 'mixing' the primary pigments themselves, making their perception and subsequently the composition of a colour pallet easy.

Two additional forms are added, representing black and white. Together with the elements they represent lighter or darker tones of the colours.

Given the simple characteristics of the system, its application requires an insignificant cost, and its adoption by various industries and society can improve the satisfaction and wellbeing of a group of individuals whose particular characteristics deprive them of a fully independent every-day experience.

Continue reading the full article at ICOGRADA

Don't Panic - It's not in North America

The Don't Panic Pack is a unique free publication found in carefully selected independent shops, bars, universities and art spaces. Also distributed outside alternative music events and launch parties, it contains all sorts of arts and culture goodies and information for cities all around the world with the emphasis on design and the future of our planet. (Unfortunately there are no distributors in North America.) At the heart of the pack find the Don't Panic Poster where a rotation of established and unknown, up and coming artists design around an issue that affects culture across the world. On this site find an interactive online magazine to further explore the issue raised on the poster where you can contribute to the debate with text, graphic design, illustration, photography, animation, music and film for all to see.

Check out the previous issues posters or submit your design to the current competition.

There are some gems throughout the 186+ posters on the site. Some well know artists/designers such as Banksy, Pentagram, Jamie Reid and Jermyville have created posters.

Shawn O'Keefe & The Cheaper Show

Victoria Fave Shawn O'Keefe (AKA Trust36 ) has a great blog showcasing his art and design work. Shawn is one of 150 artists involved in an upcoming art show in Vancouver called the Cheaper Show. "The concept of The Cheaper Show is very simple: 150 multi-disciplined international artists presenting 300 pieces of art, each priced at $200 for one night only. Far from being an 'art sale,' each exhibiting artist consciously makes a sacrifice by selling their work for less than its potential value. This creates united support for the event, the arts community, and an opportunity for this show to take place in an environment that is accessible to everyone. In turn, many walk away with sales, exposure, commissions and gallery representation, as well as having an opportunity to connect with peers on an even playing field."

Some samples of Shawn's work below.

The Poster Design of Chaz Maviyane-Davies

Chaz Maviyane-Davies is a Zimbabwe national, presently Professor of Design at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. For more than two decades his work has taken on issues of consumerism, health, nutrition, social responsibility, the environment and human rights. "Over the years I have tried to use images and ideas to cut through complacency and apathy while trying to raise consciousness about an array of social issues from discrimination and human rights, to health and the environment. Creating an alternate vision as my expression in a pervading regressive body politic has never been easy, but design is my weapon and therein lies the challenge I call "Creative Defiance."