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The Importance of Design in Activism
I originally published this post on July 6, 2007 at the Groundswell Blog. You can see the original post here.
This afternoon, while I was walking to the subway from work, I ran into a group of union workers raising awareness that their pay was not commensurate to the amount of profit they bring in to the company, thus their labor was undervalued. They handed me this flyer:
I took one look and thought, "Tell AT&T/Cingular?.. How?" I stopped and asked the next flyer-wielder how I could make a difference, and pointed out that there was no contact information on the flyer. She explained that they'd been in a rush to print them, that they wanted to flyer the same day the iPhone was released.
To their credit, they're drawing on a clear analogy. Whether I like the aesthetic is a matter of choice. Their first and foremost thought was that they needed to convince us to take action, and this is clear from the flyer. So urgent was their need, however, that they failed to tell us how to take action. Their website is plagued with similar problems.
I mention this to illustrate just one role that design can play in activism. Without considerable thought about design, we can very easily fail to meet our mission. It's a rudimentary observation, but one that we can't ignore if we mean to make a difference.
This afternoon, while I was walking to the subway from work, I ran into a group of union workers raising awareness that their pay was not commensurate to the amount of profit they bring in to the company, thus their labor was undervalued. They handed me this flyer:
I took one look and thought, "Tell AT&T/Cingular?.. How?" I stopped and asked the next flyer-wielder how I could make a difference, and pointed out that there was no contact information on the flyer. She explained that they'd been in a rush to print them, that they wanted to flyer the same day the iPhone was released.
To their credit, they're drawing on a clear analogy. Whether I like the aesthetic is a matter of choice. Their first and foremost thought was that they needed to convince us to take action, and this is clear from the flyer. So urgent was their need, however, that they failed to tell us how to take action. Their website is plagued with similar problems.
I mention this to illustrate just one role that design can play in activism. Without considerable thought about design, we can very easily fail to meet our mission. It's a rudimentary observation, but one that we can't ignore if we mean to make a difference.
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Comment by Libby Davy on April 6, 2008 at 8:39pm
- Online communications school? Andy Gibson - where are you... School of Everything - Everywhere...
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Couldn't agree with you more James. When I was a young undergrad communications student, I was delighted to be sharing the course with a mature age activist who was there to learn how to run community-issue campaigns. If only these skills and awareness was more widely available. Adbusters went some way to redress the balance. Democracy thrives when the tools of good communication (eg. design) are evenly distributed.
I guess that's way we created this social network... There are some very knowledgeable people in here, but now I want to see it populated by people like the Communications Workers union (ironic!) to transfer knowledge and skills.
Let's get the word out there - and be generous with our knowledge.
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