Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design is a booklet I wrote and designed to introduce advocacy organizations to basic principles and techniques of information design. It’s full of examples of interesting design from groups around the world in a variety of media and forms. It has tips, excercises, and even recommended Free Software packages to help polish up your graphics.

I worked with the Tacitcal Tech collective who provided editorial feedback and helped track down reproduction rights for the images. They’re also coordinating printing and distribution to NGOs. The project was funded by the OSI Information Program. The booklet is Creative Commons licensed.

Download the full booklet at http://backspace.com/infodesign.pdf

From a February 2008 interview with Steve Duenes, graphics director for The New York Times:

From: Nicholas Kristof
Subject: the power of art

in september i traveled with bill gates to africa to look at his work fighting aids there. while setting the trip up, it emerged that his initial interest in giving pots of money to fight disease had arisen after he and melinda read a two-part series of articles i did on third world disease in January 1997. until then, their plan had been to give money mainly to get countries wired and full of computers.

bill and melinda recently reread those pieces, and said that it was the second piece in the series, about bad water and diarrhea killing millions of kids a year, that really got them thinking of public health. Great! I was really proud of this impact that my worldwide reporting and 3,500-word article had had. But then bill confessed that actually it wasn't the article itself that had grabbed him so much -- it was the graphic. It was just a two column, inside graphic, very simple, listing third world health problems and how many people they kill. but he remembered it after all those years and said that it was the single thing that got him redirected toward public health.

No graphic in human history has saved so many lives in africa and asia.

A little over the top, but it’s a nice story. Though while Mr. Kristof celebrates, this seems as much an indictment of NY Times coverage of rural poverty. (via)

Updated April 28, 2008: I dug up the graphic in question, posted it here, and added a link in the text above.

On March 19, the Granny Peace Brigade met in the rain in front of the military recruiting station in Times Square to mark the 5th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, “knitting ‘stump socks’ for amputee veterans, baby blankets and other items for Iraqi families.” There were a lot of great protest actions Wednesday, but the forceful assertion of care here is striking. Grannies vs. generals; slow, manual creation vs. fast, technological destruction — this is not just non-violence, but perhaps an opposite of violence. Here’s another short video.

Every Wednesday from 4:30 to 5:30 pm Grandmothers Against the War holds a vigil at Rockefeller Center. All are welcome.

Democracy Now, April 10, 2008:

Amy Goodman: I was shocked in reading last night the history of the Olympic torch relay — you know, the torch itself going back to ancient Greece — but the relay to be Nazi Olympics, 1936.

Minky Worden: There’s a wonderful book, a new academic book called Nazi Games, which gives a concise history of this. But the torch relay itself is essentially a PR invention of the Nazi era. And the point of it was to run the torch through parts of Europe that Germany that the Nazis hoped to take over, including the Sudetenland.

I’ve heard of candidates keeping blogs, but I think this is a first. From the Hindustan Times:

“Malaysia’s political landscape was hit hard from cyberspace last week when a blogger entered Parliament after winning in elections that saw the ruling coalition lose its two-thirds majority in the House. In a country where the mainstream media largely supported the government, Jeff Ooi — a former advertising copywriter — used his political blog to win a seat on an Opposition ticket. He was not the only blogger in the fray.

Elizabeth Wong, a social activist and blogger, won a state assembly election....

Technology destroyed the powerful hold that Abdullah’s Barisan Nasional had over Malaysia, where sex scandals and videos of ministers frolicking with their girlfriends have been posted on YouTube, much to their embarrassment.”