Design Against Domestic Violence

Whilst attempting to navigate towards "The Bradford Animation Festivals" home page I came across some evocative imagery. I found it on a blog dedicated to raising awareness of domestic violence. "Osocio" show various social awareness campaigns from around the world. Many of the images shown get their message across through strong, striking design with powerful attention grabbing imagery. Here are a few images that caught my attention...
This first image had the strongest impact on me. At first glance I feel their is a slight degree of ambiguity in the image, I was unaware of its context and simply focused in on the high contrast hand in between the legs. In all honesty the first thoughts that crossed through my mind were of sex, the image looks like something you would see on the shirt of a cool teenager or young adult. Sharp stylish and with an emphasis on sex. It is only on closer observation that the disproportion between the arm and legs becomes clear, the legs twisted inwards in a insecure stance that the image tells its true story. The hand open, covering or hiding the tooth. At this point my inner feelings were of embarrassment or shame for confusing these two subjects, followed by revulsion at the people that see them as the same, however that is no doubt where the image draws some of its power. The Image was created by "Grabarz & Partner" (I apologize, I couldn't get onto their page but found their work on Coloribus) for the German anti abuse Organisation "Gegen Missbrauch".

Bellow is an image created by "BUNDESVERBAND FRAUENBERATUNGSSTELLEN UND FRAUENNOTRUFE" again a striking high contrast image of sorrow and frailty. The statistic included is frightening.

I believe that the above image was created by students at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Their group is known as "Design Rebels" (I think my class needs a cool name like that!). The lecturer "Noha Scalin" who runs this course is one of the contributing authors of this Blog. He/She states that the students are "required to create a project that reaches the community beyond the school" I believe that this is a commendable objective to set your students.

It reminds me of my experience at the 2008 "Semi Permanent" seminar. I believe it was Stefan Sagmeister who was speaking. He said that he sets his students in New York the task of designing something that has an emotional impact on someones life. They then must document and prove that their work had this impact in order to pass.
Also check out his web page, there is an interesting Q/A section of advice f or students.

This also reminds me of one other statement I heard on this subject. It was in the BBC program "Design for Life" that aired on BBC2. Disappointingly it is no longer o n BBC I player. In the show Philippe Starck searches for growing British Design talent. Although it is formatted in a way similar to "Americas Next Top Model" their are some very useful tid bits of advice throughout the series. One point in particular was an open brief where the contestants were challenged with creating something that helps humanity. It was stated that a good designer with an open brief can focus it down into something useful and onto a very particular subject where they can begin work on something that can help to solve a problem.

This in addition makes me think of a brief set by D&AD for the student category of their competition. They challenged students to design something that could help reduce crime.
It sounds like an impossible challenge. However by focusing down to one key issue or one key aspect, type or cause of crime. From here the task would be to use creative problem solving to raise awareness for and to try to deter some criminal activity.

This reminds me of another recent campaign. The "Think Drug Driving" campaign, it also has another home page here.
This is a statement about the motivations of the campaign:

"THINK! strategy for drug drive"

"There is a need to start a conversation around this issue by cutting through the myths, confusion and contradiction. Our strategy has a two fold approach:

• To generate wider public discussion and debate to further impact on the social acceptability of drug driving.
• To raise awareness of drug driving as an issue amongst the target audience and their friendship groups challenging existing beliefs with fact and heightening understanding of the risks; the penalties of enforcement and their consequences."

Here is the video that I'm sure nearly everyone in the UK must have seen by now.

As you can see it ties in closely with what I feel would be a useful response to the D&AD brief.
Here is some of the material produced for the campaign.

Thees Images were created by "debut art" artists "Sean Freeman" & "Craig Ward".
I came across an article on this campaign, I believe it was in the "Metro" in the article the artists explained how it made sense to focus on the eyes and so purchased close up scientific photographs as a starting point and the altered them digitally. The veins on the images were apparently painted in by hand. I think these posters look marvelous.

They remind me ever so slightly of a previous piece of work of mine (Uncompleted) where I sliced up some kidneys I purchased from the butchers, into letters of the alphabet in order to promote the work of Damien Hirst. I also believe that the Rise now poster near the top of the post has similar properties with its strong macro image against a white background.

Anyway, ran a little off topic with the meat letters. I just felt that this talk of creative problem solving was relevant, particularly in the case of crime and social awareness because of the issues raised by the super barrio character and the sink estates that I have been looking at.
I have also considered speaking with either the victims of crime or trying to arrange a ride along with the police in order to look at such issues. The ride along would also be relevant with issues of vigilantes raised by my interpretation of the "Super Barrio" story.

Finally I came across this last little bit of video whilst putting this post together. I checked it out because I thought it was about developing stories, however it turns out to be about incorporating stories and making them accessible through and with design. Still interesting tho.