Communicating to your community

This poster, designed for the Lusaka International Community School's upcoming Fun Fair, provides a great example of the benefits for on-demand printing.  Because theywere doing a relatively small number of flyers and posters it made sense to use a drop-in print centre.  This allowed us to develop 'set' of posters with four different background colours.  They can be posted separately or in a grouping for more impact (on a notice board or digitally).   Designing it in a landscape format also meant we could use the same design for the digital poster...landscape translates better to these glowing rectangles that are such a huge part of our lives.

Tools of the trade - supporting innovation

A project came to InHouse recently that started out as a straightforward poster design and layout project.  When discussing its application, however, the project was revised and become a successful and unique brochure.  The brochure is an accordion "desk guide" which can be easily carried around and referred to for field reporting of health data.  The resulting product got everyone's stamp of approval -- even Bill Gates!


Left, the front cover for this desk guide.  The brochure has 5 folds/6 panels, unlike the typical brochure printed from an A4 size with 2 folds and three panels.  This enabled us to put a lot of information into a document that would have otherwise been unwieldy.  (If it was an A4 or A5 booklet for example, or as an A3 poster as originally planned).  It was printed locally, another great thing.

The NGO that sponsored the project can be commended for their willingness to go beyond what their 'deliverable' was supposed to be and think not about what line-item requirement they were meeting with the project and instead really considered the practical use and intended audience -- health workers using this new mobile-phone based reporting system in the field.

The mobile phone reporting system replaces a paper-based system whereby malaria data was submitted monthly and compiled at a central location.  This new system not only adds an element of accountability but also "enables health officials to better understand the disease burden and ensure that there are enough malaria supplies to support the community."

Celebrating Age: Patina

As an artist and photographer I frequently find myself distracted by the tiniest of things....the color of the sky before a storm, that hint of a smile behind an otherwise stony facade, the way a shadow falls across a road....

Perhaps as a side effect of all the new construction and freshly tarred roads turning up around Lusaka I'm noticing not the slick new surfaces, the freshly painted signs and clean windows....but the patina and character that comes only with age.

From my days in my Fine Arts programme at University, one concept that I embraced, particularly in pottery, was the aesthetic derived from Buddhism called wabi-sabi:  beauty in imperfection.  Wabi-sabi characteristics include asymmetry, irregularity, simplicity, austerity, modesty, intimacy and the "appreciation of the ingenuous integrity of natural objects and processes."

Last week I grabbed by camera and put together a study in celebration of age which I'm calling Patina.  These images are from a bigger collection of photos from Lusaka's Olympic Pool (dedicated just before Zambia's independence in 1964.)