music lovers,
art aficionados and
shoe whores,
I hope you can come out to play thursday night. I’ll be playing my music during an opening for our dear friend Wendy MacNaughton (of 7×7 magazine fame. yes, THE 7×7 magazine). The show was curated by our own lovely ms. irene duller. Come have a bevie and show the love.
1939-1943 farm security administration : the depression in full color.
Bound for Glory: America in Color is the first major exhibition of the little known color images taken by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI). Comprised of seventy digital prints made from color transparencies taken between 1939 and 1943, this exhibition reveals a surprisingly vibrant world that has typically been viewed only through black-and-white images. These vivid scenes and portraits capture the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations, the nation’s subsequent economic recovery and industrial growth, and the country’s great mobilization for World War II.
The photographs in Bound for Glory, many by famed photographers such as John Vachon, Jack Delano, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott, document not only the subjects in the pictures, but also the dawn of a new era — the Kodachrome era. These colorful images mark a historic divide in visual presentation between the monochrome world of the pre-modern age and the brilliant hues of the present. They change the way we look — and think about — our past.
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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