AAD Assignment 2- Post 1, Concept development

 So I've decided to do a project for GICHD (https://www.gichd.org/). Trying to unify the messaging in mine/UXO awareness and small arms and light weapons safety in conflict zones. This is a complex project and I do not plan on solving it, just constructing a framework and providing some ideas.

The main problem in the area is competing NGOs. They are often personality driven, everyone knows everyone else, and there are clashing personalities. That is the main reason things that there are no non-safety standards. GICHD has managed to push through safety standards for a lot of UXO work, but beyond that education is up to each NGO. Some do great work, some not so much, or just rely on what is at hand.

Ideally education and awareness material would be localized and be accessible by illiterate (due to education or age) people. Using an image of a SE Asian child in Africa is somewhat unrelatable to the local population. Globalization is solving this problem, but it still exists.

To start with, I had to decide on a topic. As you can see in my note book below I first considered working on something related to boardgames:

• Art installations
• Event branding
• Workshops
• Merch lines

All possibly being shown at Essen the biggest board game trade show.

Then I decided on something a bit more important, and that I know about, unexploded ordnance awareness and safety education. I selected mentally went down lists of NGOs, and decided on HALO and GICHD. I settled on GICHD as they are a more overarching organization. HALO is big, but still but GICHD has influence in almost every GICHD and is a repository of information from the UN.

In a perfect world this process would result in a library images, iconography, and concepts that can be used around the world as there would be localized version of each item. It would not rely on writing to communicate. The use of icons in the products would be based on geographically relevant traffic signs to indicate stopping, turning, avoiding, etc. Local emergency numbers could be included if there are agencies that respond to UXO/weapons discovery.

Here are two Iraqi posters from the UN Mine Action Service. They deliver mixed messages as far as the telephone number to call, have a lot of text on them, strangely some in English. On a good note, they are localized with regard to images. Of note, at the time this blog is being written the UNMAS home page returns a 404, hopefully that is a temporary glitch.

Once I had this concept, I moved on to deliverables. Next post!