TAKEAWAY: Today is World Press Freedom Day, as designed by the United Nations General Assembly. What better way to celebrate it than with this collection of posters by Adonis Durado and his talented team at the Times of Oman and Al Shabiba.
Designer: Winie Ariany
Designer: Ralph Bagares
Designer: Isidore Vic Carloman
Designer: Adonis Durado
Designer: Quasiem Gamiet
Designer: Mohammed Qardan
Designer: Waleed Rabin
Designer: Srinivasa Rao
Designer: Sahir K.M.
Designer: Lucille Umali
I join the many who give thanks today, World Press Freedom Day, for living in countries where press freedom is a right, never to be taken for granted.
I was recently in Chile, attending the WAN IFRA Latin America conference, and one of the most popular sessions involved a discussion of freedom of the press, in a continent where such freedom is not always respected. In my own native country, Cuba, freedom of the press does not exist.
To celebrate this day of World Press Freedom, I am delighted to showcase the work of Adonis Durado, the award winning design director of the Times of Oman and Al Shabiba.
I am sure you will feel, as I do, that the work of these designers is very moving, quite strong and communicates the importance of the message, and of this day, at a glance. Congratulations to the Times of Oman team!
This is how Adonis explained their project for World Press Freedom:
We call it “Any Given Sunday”, a weekly and informal gathering with my staff where we spend an hour discussing art and design, or reviewing works from international designers, or watching documentary films relating to visual arts and communication, or doing fun exercises using obstructions (like asking them to redesign the toilet signage while ruling out cliché symbolism).
The idea of this meeting is to motivate and inspire them, to churn out creativity other than making pages, to increase their visual vocabulary and teach them how to articulate their work, and of course to add fun in the office.
But this week, we’ve gotten a little serious in our creative exercise. When I learned from WAN-IFRA website about the World Press Freedom Day (May 3), I asked my team to come up with a poster commemorating the freedom of speech and a call to end impunity against media killing. I told my staff that in my country, corrupt politicians don’t sue reporters for their articles, they simply put bullets in their heads. Just imagine that in 2009 alone, 32 Filipino journalists and media workers were slain, as accounted by media organization Reporters Without Borders.
Working on the theme “Silence kills democracy, but a free press talks”, my staff (including myself) created these posters: