Underground Ads (Advertising, Design & Strategy for Non-Profits

this is the last sentence of project h design’s mission, and it is a statement many of us, as creatives, have declared at some point of our lives {often in the same breath as “one day i will design my own font”}. project h is a non-profit organization based in the bay area that “connects the power of design to the people who need it most” and all that good stuff, including adaptive eyecare glasses and the HippoRoller. one can’t help but be inspired, especially when you share a common process + passion.

but a thought provoking article by bruce nussbaum asks, “is humanitarian design the new imperialism”? even more so, “does our desire to help do more harm than good?”

So where are we with humanitarian design? I know almost all of my Gen Y students want to do it because their value system is into doing good globally. Young designers in consultancies and corporations want to do humanitarian design for the same reason.

But should we take a moment now that the movement is gathering speed to ask whether or not American and European designers are collaborating with the right partners, learning from the best local people, and being as sensitive as they might to the colonial legacies of the countries they want to do good in. Do designers need to better see themselves through the eyes of the local professional and business classes who believe their countries are rising as the U.S. and Europe fall and wonder who, in the end, has the right answers? Might Indian, Brazilian and African designers have important design lessons to teach Western designers?

And finally, one last question: why are we only doing humanitarian design in Asia and Africa and not Native American reservations or rural areas, where standards of education, water and health match the very worst overseas?

his musings about technological colonialism are interesting and nussbaum has made a similar inquiry in the past, “is ‘green’ the ‘new imperialism’?” and this is where we catch ourselves being defensive and paralyzed at the same time. he makes a compelling argument so much so that we hesitate a moment and check our intentions, making sure our feet are still planted in the ground with enough forward momentum. we think about jiu jitsu. we ask ourselves, am i an imperialist? we wonder about that font that we still would like to design, one day. and in the meantime, the founder of project h, emily pilloton, responds to mr. nussbaum.

Judith Warner had a great piece in the New York Times a few days ago, in which she managed to weave together an argument that featured both Michael Moore and the practice of female genital cutting. Worth reading, because she also put quite eloquently an idea that forms the basis of Underground’s own approach to communication:

…she had learned, through years of trial and error, that to reach people you had to meet them where they were. Respect them. Acknowledge their social norms, beliefs and practices. Find common ground. Build on shared human aspirations — for safety, for dignity, for a better life for one’s children — then discover how those shared aspirations might reasonably translate into ending practices that cause suffering.

If you come in and say, ‘You are awful people,’ people tune out and say, ‘Who do you think you are?’ …Making people feel bad about what they’re doing doesn’t work; they only get defensive. What does work is getting people to discuss together what are their rights and what they mean. It’s not just a question of blaming and shaming people but educating and empowering them.

Above, an example of the nine-planet crest of the Hosokawa clan, as seen in the Asian Art Museum’s new exhibition Lords of the Samurai, via the museum’s excellent new blog. The exhibition, which I saw when it opened a couple weeks ago, is just fantastically cool, and the crest, which appears over and over again, is just a small part of it.

Now I know what you’re saying: “But Heath, how could this ancient crest depict nine planets when Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930? Are space aliens involved? Or perhaps time-traveling robots?” This is Japan we’re talking about, of course, and one should not immediately discount science fiction-related explanations.

You’re also probably asking: “What exactly does this have to do with nonprofit communications?”

The answer to that second one is, of course, not much. But it’s Friday afternoon, and someone foolishly decided to leave me with the keys to the blog, so please read on for more examples of the crest, and for the truth about the time-traveling robots.
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Last summer, I had the great privilege to attend a “listening session” hosted by the Brookings Institution and Business for Diplomatic Action at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy on the subject of, well, public diplomacy.

The session, along with several like it that took place in other cities, brought together some very smart people from government, academia, entertainment, and communications to talk about what’s gone wrong with the way our country is perceived abroad, and what can be done to change it. It was a little intimidating looking around the table that day, to be sure, but I did my best to speak up for the non-profits we work with, which have such a vital role to play in shaping our society, and how we’re perceived around the world.

Specifically, there was a lot of discussion about the creation of private-public partnership– what that might look like, who should be involved, and where the pitfalls of something like that might lie. It was an absolutely fascinating conversation, and the end result (at least for now) is a report called Voices of America: U.S. Public Diplomacy for the 21st Century. Rebuilding our image overseas is going to be a key challenge over the next four years, and it’s good to know that such smart people are thinking about how we can all contribute to that.

Telling American Stories is something of a side project, but it seems like the kind of thing people who are viewing this site would be interested in, so here goes.

I’ve been working on this project for the past several years, creating a workshop, an essay, and now a web site to talk about how traditional American narratives inform the frames people have about the work that many of us do, and how progressive values intersect with what many call traditional American values. I started working on Telling American Stories because I was frustrated that so many organizations and issues that I cared deeply about were being defined as somehow outside of what’s really “American.” I didn’t see anyone making the argument that I wanted to make about how progressive causes have just as much (and probably even more) right to frame their struggle in terms of our shared history as conservative ones. So I created a workshop. Then wrote it up.

If that sounds interesting, why not check it out? And then leave a comment, because I’d love to know what you think of it.