exurban

I wanted to weigh in on this a little, because this is turning into a thing and I feel like I can actually contribute to the conversation.

James White created his Help Japan poster early after the tragedy following the earthquake; others have followed suit or in the process of doing so now. Almost immediately, there has been a backlash to their efforts, with the criticism stemming from the idea that this profiting from a tragedy, self aggrandizing or from My Brain is Made of Things Made of Gold:

My disaster preparedness kit includes a Swiss grid, some woodblock printing filters, and enough drugs to make me think that doing a minimalist-movie-poster-style poster is going to help out.

Disasters aren’t like causes, causes win supporters through many means: design is one of them. Disasters destroy lives and either you can donate and you have, you can and won’t, or can’t and won’t. No poster, no matter how beautiful, is gonna change that.

And honestly, I don’t care about tribute posters or anything where all proceeds go to the victims…you hang up a disaster design poster on your wall and all I see is a dickbag diploma.

Now I’ve never met James White in person, but I’ve read his blog posts, participated in his Signalnoise broadcasts and followed him on Twitter long enough to feel like I can say the guy is an ok guy. This is what I have to say on the issue:

One of my best friends regularly travels to Japan on business. He was in the Tokyo area when the quake hit. He didn’t experience anything more than inconvenience, which as he said shows you how good the Japanese disaster preparedness is. He was able to leave. A day after the quake he made his way to the airport and fly back to the USA. He was relieved to be away but he told me he felt some kind of survivors guilt. To paraphrase, he said the he really felt that he should be doing something, but there wasn’t anything to do. Still the idea that when confronted with a huge tragedy he should be helping his fellow human beings was a very real and present thing. I told him that not being a search and rescue professional or Tony Stark, there wasn’t anything he could do on the scene and it was ok to leave. In lieu of direct action all he can do is donate to the relief effort. That’s all most of us can do.

I don’t look at the folks that designed relief effort graphics as people who thought ‘I’ll save Japan with graphic design!’ I look at them as people who felt that call to help their fellow human being and thought they could use their skills to magnify their efforts. I know that there are folks that will want to profit from this disaster, there always are. All I’ve seen from the design community is a legitimate desire to help.