Life is but a Dream — Editorial Essay
By: Annie Counsell
Tags: Essay, Refugees, Graphic Design, Design For Good, Asylum Seekers

Can Graphic Design help reduce the negative prejudice so many hold towards refugees and asylum-seekers, and instead, raise positive awareness, thus altering our political stances?

According to The UN Refugee Agency, 79.5 million people across the globe were forcibly displaced by the end of 2019; 26 million of those within this figure included refugees and roughly half were under the age of eighteen (The UN Refugee Agency, 2020). There are many socioeconomic factors that can impact refugees, such as ‘social isolation, unemployment, poverty, language difficulties, difference in cultural background, and stressful living conditions’, which unfortunately, can stimulate a negative prejudice from those who are not informed on or who have not experienced the realities of displacement (M. Thabet, 2018). With this in mind, how can graphic design help to reduce this negative prejudice around those seeking refuge, and instead, raise awareness and stimulate positive conversation around the realities of what it means to be a refugee?

What Design Can Do — Refugee Challenge

One perfect example of where design has been beneficial towards positive awareness around the refugee crisis, was when multi-disciplinary platform What Design Can Do, in 2016, worked alongside The UN Refugee Agency in launching multiple design briefs. These briefs for their Refugee Challenge competition were introduced during the height of the European refugee crisis to raise active awareness and show the potential of design.

The competition was placed in the hands of creatives, with devising ideas on how to improve real urban living conditions, raising awareness, and stimulating change, being placed at the heart of the campaigns. The call for creatives received 631 entries from a variety of 70 countries around the world, which was reduced down to five key campaigns that are still being developed today (Refugee Challenge — What Design Can Do, 2017).

The Welcome Card, designed by Veronica Polinedrio, was one of the five designs to win this competition. The design concept is a plastic ID card that is issued to all individuals who apply for asylum in an EU country; it creates easier access to employment and transport for the holder, but also allows ‘peace of mind in regards to their asylum application process, while welcoming and including them in their new country through social activities’ (Refugee Challenge — What Design Can Do, 2017).

This design campaign is an incredible example of where a simple concept has the ability to provoke genuine change and stimulate positive conversation. This beautiful design puts empathy, support and validity into a system that ultimately does not always possess these attributes and creates a sense of human connection at the centre of seeking asylum.

“It is incredible that in 2017 we have such obsolete systems of accepting and welcoming people in the world.” — (Polinedrio, 2017)

The Refugee Nation — Yara Said

In addition to the previous case study, another large-scale design concept that reached thousands, and had a huge impact when designing for change, was the incredible solution The Refugee Nation. In 2016, ten athletes from across the globe united together to create The Refugee Nation, a team that competed in the Rio de Janeiro Olympic games, whose members were all refugees. Though this action of inclusivity alone created awareness for those observing or competing in the Olympics that year, designer Yara Said took this concept one step further, and created the incredible symbolic flag for the team (Morby, 2016).

The simplistic yet powerful design of the team’s flag included a bright orange background, complemented by a striking black line across the lower half of the flag, designed to show allyship to the mass of refugees who have worn life jackets during their displacement. Yara Said, once a Syrian refugee herself who fled to The Netherlands, explained that her design choices were a “symbol of solidarity for all the brave souls who had to wear life vests to cross the sea” and is aimed to be ‘universal and inclusive’ for refugees across the globe(Whpped Cream, 2017). As well as the development of the flag, a national anthem was also composed by Moutaz Arian, a Syrian refugee now living in Istanbul, who wrote the patriotic piece to reinforce the narrative of nationality for the team. Moutaz Arian remarked upon his fully instrumental composition, saying that music is a universal language ‘that doesn’t require translation’, hence why lyrics are not included in the piece (The Refugee Nation, 2017).

This design campaign received incredible coverage beyond the Olympics; in fact, it received the most headlined coverage for any design of the year, featuring in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Dezeen, Buzzfeed, CBS News, El Confidencial, The Oscars and many more (Whpped Cream, 2017). As referenced on The Refugee Nation website, the influence that this flag has had on history, representation and activism has been astounding — the flag has also been given a permanent display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the world’s leading museum of Art and Design (The Refugee Nation, 2017). With the widespread coverage of this truly influential design in mind, it is evident that graphic design plays a vital role in stimulating and creating awareness towards the realities of the experiences of refugees; this design, through none other than colour and context, created a symbol of unity that spread across the globe.

Common Sans — Essen Agency

With large scale design projects of course being imperative when designing for good, to contrast, subtle activism is extremely effective at simplifying and communicating a key message; it reduces an entire concept into a digestible amount of information for the target audience. In 2015, Swedish design agency ‘Essen International’ alongside the charity ‘Solvatten’, an organisation that works to provide safe water to developing countries, worked together to produce the responsive typeface Common Sans during the European refugee crisis (Turner, 2015). When a user types with Common Sans, the text is programmed to automatically replace the word ‘refugee’ with ‘human’. The typeface was designed this way to reinforce the message of humanity to individuals who may be stereotyping refugees or treating displacement with a sense of disillusionment, rather than as humanitarian crisis. This typeface provokes us to rethink the labels that we use to address each other; Essen International phrased it this way, ‘being a refugee is a temporary status, being human is permanent’ (Creative Bloq, 2015).

Furthermore, the accompanying website for Common Sans includes a link, where those who have visited the site have the opportunity to donate to either the UNHCR, the Red Cross or Solvatten, should they choose to. Common Sans is a perfect example of where graphic design, working alongside activism, can create awareness and stimulate change, in this case, for the refugee crisis. This typeface is still just as relevant today, with 1% of the current global population being displaced — 40% of which are children (The UN Refugee Agency, 2020). This clear and concise solution reminds many of us of the ongoing importance of welcoming refugees as humans who are seeking safety into our countries, and that this humanitarian crisis should be a very simple moral concept to understand, rather than one to treat with hostility.

“Common Sans is a small piece of activism, disguised as a typeface” — (Rhodes, 2015)

Finally, with these solutions in mind, could graphic design help change our political approach to welcoming refugees?

According to the speakers at Dezeen’s annual politics and design talk, graphic communication has the ability to politically influence the public, yet, the panel all agreed, that realistically this would be more achievable through small scale solutions, such as Common sans for example, rather than large scale, such as The Refugee Nation (Fairs, 2018). They expanded on this, saying that politics, and the topics within the subject, in general, are becoming increasingly disillusioned to the general public and undigestible when communicating information (Fairs, 2018). Therefore, multiple, political design solutions, communicating comprehensive information, could easily adjust the ways in which we internalise our politics, the ways in which we treat other people and even the party we choose to vote for. Slowly but surely, graphic communication could become the bridge between reconnecting the world of ordinary people to our politicians and their policies.

Conclusion

In conclusion, based on the evidence throughout this essay, it is clear that graphic design plays an important role in stimulating awareness and provoking positive conversation on the refugee crisis. With this in mind, in the future, we may see design influencing the ways in which we address politics and activism for the better.

Life is but a dream — Bibliography

UNHCR. 2020. Figures At A Glance. [online] Available at: <https://www.unhcr.org/uk/figures-at-a-glance.html> [Accessed 15 November 2020].

M. Thabet, A., 2018. Violence Experience Among Immigrants And Refugees: A Cross-Sectional Study In Italy. [online] Hindawi. Available at: <https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2018/7949483/> [Accessed 15 November 2020].

What Design Can Do. 2017. Refugee Challenge — What Design Can Do. [online] Available at: <https://www.whatdesigncando.com/refugee-challenge/> [Accessed 15 November 2020].

What Design Can Do. 2017. Refugee Challenge — What Design Can Do. [online] Available at: <https://www.whatdesigncando.com/refugee-challenge/> [Accessed 15 November 2020].

Polinedrio, V., 2017. ‘The Current Immigration System Is Entirely Obsolete’ — What Design Can Do. [online] What Design Can Do. Available at: <https://www.whatdesigncando.com/stories/current-immigration-system-entirely-obsolete/> [Accessed 18 November 2020].

Morby, A., 2016. Refugees Create Alternative Flag For Their Rio 2016 Olympic Team. [online] Dezeen. Available at: <https://www.dezeen.com/2016/08/11/refugees-alternative-flag-rio-2016-olympic-team/> [Accessed 27 November 2020].

Cream, W., 2017. The Refugee Nation. [online] WPPedCream 2017. Available at: <https://sites.wpp.com/wppedcream/2017/advertising/promo_and_activation/the-refugee-nation> [Accessed 27 November 2020].

Nation, T., 2017. The Refugee Nation. [online] The Refugee Nation. Available at: <http://www.therefugeenation.com/#OurAnthem> [Accessed 27 November 2020].

Cream, W., 2017. The Refugee Nation. [online] WPPedCream 2017. Available at: <https://sites.wpp.com/wppedcream/2017/advertising/promo_and_activation/the-refugee-nation> [Accessed 27 November 2020].

Nation, T., 2017. The Refugee Nation. [online] The Refugee Nation. Available at: <http://www.therefugeenation.com/#OurAnthem> [Accessed 27 November 2020].

Turner, N., 2015. Common Sans Typeface, By Essen International. [online] Design Week. Available at: <https://www.designweek.co.uk/inspiration/common-sans-typeface-by-essen-international/> [Accessed 18 November 2020].

Bloq, C., 2015. Font Of The Day: Common Sans. [online] Creative Bloq. Available at: <https://www.creativebloq.com/typography/font-day-common-sans-121518364> [Accessed 18 November 2020].

UNHCR. 2020. Figures At A Glance. [online] Available at: <https://www.unhcr.org/uk/figures-at-a-glance.html> [Accessed 15 November 2020].

Rhodes, M., 2015. Clever ‘Common Sans’ Font Has A Hidden Humanitarian Message. [online] Wired. Available at: <https://www.wired.com/2015/12/clever-common-sans-font-has-a-hidden-humanitarian-message/> [Accessed 3 December 2020].

Fairs, M., 2018. Design Can Help To Change The System, Say Speakers At Politics Talk. [online] Dezeen. Available at: <https://www.dezeen.com/2018/02/20/movie-good-design-bad-world-politics/> [Accessed 30 November 2020].

Fairs, M., 2018. Design Can Help To Change The System, Say Speakers At Politics Talk. [online] Dezeen. Available at: <https://www.dezeen.com/2018/02/20/movie-good-design-bad-world-politics/> [Accessed 30 November 2020].