Day Labor Station Poster Series

Organization Information:

Organization Name

Public Design Studio (dba: Public Architecture)

Organization's Mission Statement

Public Architecture is a 501(c)(3) national nonprofit organization established to bring high-level design to underserved people and places. Public Architecture initiates a select series of design projects with innovative environmental and social justice components, and leverages the resources of the architecture and design professions at-large through pro bono design “service grants.” We have recruited over 500 firms to pledge a minimum of 1% of their billable hours to pro bono service.

Organization Website

http://www.publicarchitecture.org

Submission Information

Impact Essay

Public Architecture purchased Adobe Creative Suite 4.0 through TechSoup to tell the story of our most important social change design initiative, the Day Labor Station.

Each day, over 110,000 people look for day labor work in the U.S. More than 75% of day labor hiring sites occupy spaces meant for other uses, such as street corners and home improvement store parking lots. These sites are far from ideal; their presence in spaces designated for other uses means that they often lack even the most basic amenities.

Day Labor Station, a design initiative of Public Architecture, is a sustainable structure that provides a place for day labor gatherings and facilitates the employment process. The project is one of Public Architecture’s most innovative and important initiatives, yet the issue of day labor in the U.S. is so mired in controversy that communicating the need for the Station is a major challenge to overcome.

Public Architecture’s staff collaborated with a graphic design firm to produce a poster series produced with Adobe Creative Suite 4.0. The posters were intended to clearly lay out the ethical and humanistic imperative for the Station, grounding our proposed design in its socioeconomic, historic, and moral context. One of the posters features a large-scale portrait of one of the day laborers that we interviewed. Surrounded by real quotes from letters of support and rage elicited over the past few years, the portrait shows the human side of this issue, drawing the connections between day laborers’ desire to provide for their families and the larger narrative of the American dream. This image gives the public the opportunity to connect with day laborers as individual human beings, rather than members of a faceless group.

The posters, thanks to TechSoup and Adobe Creative Suite 4.0, make a complex issue simple and compelling, clearly and directly expressing the need for the Station. The posters have given us, and our partner, the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON), a new visual and textual language to use in engaging supporters and enactors of this important project. Thank you TechSoup and Adobe for helping us realize this project.

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DLS panel.pdfSubmitted by publicarchitecture on April 15, 2009 - 1:29pm