A year ago, I received an email from “Tony:”

“I have looked all over the web, and just can’t find the simple themes that can be posted to the back of poster board or foam board and used at street vigils. I just need simple stuff for 11 by 17 AND 8 1/2 BY 11 COPYING.

Can you help? The power of one or two people in public holding simple antiwar protest messages is great. I just can’t find anything on the net that isn’t too artsy-fartsy, or too damn pacifist-wimpy.”

I smacked into this “artsy-fartsy” factor again a few weeks ago when United for Peace and Justice asked if I could turn out some poster designs on short notice. They sent their final copy and I set to thinking about how to represent things iconographically in a beautiful, compelling way. I rummaged through the usual toolbox (coffins, dollars, boots, ribbons, etc.) as well as play with color and typographic notes (big X’s, oversized punctuation, etc.) One slogan in particular raised an interesting problem: how to graphically represent “community” for marches in eleven very different cities.

Nevertheless, over the weekend’s iteration the org requested the gradual removal of all imagery, iconography, and embellishment. I was trying to do something graphically interesting to myself, but the group had a very specific use case in mind. The posters were not intended for pasting on the street, to attract passersby with flourish, humor, or imagery. They wanted something to be carried high and read from a distance, particularly when reproduced in photos, newspaper clippings, or seconds-long TV news highlights. As such, these were props to represent the march in memory as much as in person, to disappear and punch the message through network editing and newspaper cropping. The simpler and bolder the better.

With a little more time I would have refined these further, but here are the results below. Click on a thumbnail to download a printable PDF.

Gate 4 in Terminal 2 of Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, AZ is not meant to be used.

Behind the black stanchions, the roughly 50 x 50 foot space has no TV, no gift stand, no seats; just a row of outlets, a few windows, and a single column supporting the mostly uninterrupted, open space. Which of course makes it a perfect space for kids to wrestle and run, for strollers to park, and for bloggers to plugin their laptops and cellphones and lounge on the floor for a few restful minutes. It’s just a big, empty playroom — and a breath of fresh air, particularly after standing in line for an hour, when your departure gate is crammed, and you’re about to spend the next 5½ hours of your life hunched over your knees in steerage.

I suppose it only works because the space was relatively uncrowded — the black ropes keeping most out, but having no affect on those who toddle right under them, or the rest whose craving for free electricty overrides the risk of a stern talking to. The space probably would not have worked if this were an actual functioning departure gate. I suppose all the rigid rows of plastic seats are a good way of making sure luggage and bodies don’t collide.

But it seems like a fine idea — a sort of indoor, public park. I wish more places had uninterrupted, unstructured, uncommercialized open space. More airports should do this.

Traveling for the holidays? It’s always disturbed me that U.S. hotel rooms always seem to stock a Holy Bible. Nevermind any other tradition, or say... The Englightenment. This year, I’m packing something of my own to leave behind: atheism cards! Each of these cards has a quote I think might sow a few seeds of dissent or perhaps start a long distance discourse. I plan to leave one inside the front cover of each bible I meet. Click the image below to download a printable PDF. Or make your own. There are plenty of choice quotes here and elsewhere.

On September 21, 2006 the Art Director’s Club convened a panel discussion on design and social change. They dubbed it “Designism.”

When I first heard about it, I was not optimistic. I’ve been disappointed before by how professional associations have addressed social design, and the MP3 sat on my desktop for a long, long time. After all, how radical could a professional association actually be when its bread-and-butter is mammon itself?

But after finally listening, I was very nicely surprised. The talk covered a nice, broad range of approaches to design for social change: from Milton Glaser’s big-table, middle-of-the-road approach to Jessica Helfland’s quiet collaborative engagement to James Victore’s more autonomous guerilla style.

But the best surprise of all was George Lois. I’d always loved his work. Those big, provocative Esquire covers are truly classic. But it was a special treat to learn of the progressive motivation behind them, that the man himself was an foul-mouthed, outspoken leftist — and a veteran to boot.

The event and podcast launched a number of bloggy responses and inspired a project or two.

A year later, when asked about a follow up event, Glaser responded: enough talk. This one should be a call to action. Designism 2.0 took place on December 13, 2007.