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A Newsletter from the UN & NGOs Designers Group Geneva

Visual Communicators Newsletter
DECEMBER 2018

This is a monthly newsletter from the UN Designers and Visual Communicators Group in Geneva. Drop us a line if you would like to collaborate or share any material in this newsletter: info@UNdesigners.org

A source of inspiration

Once every year we get to admire the crown jewels of dataviz, thanks to the Information is Beautiful awards. This year we are truly spoilt for choice. The humanitarian cause may have its own category, but what surprised us is the level of creativity and how good causes populate other categories too. Whether is exploring gender stereotypes through Shakespeare's plays, crashing myths about the connection between immigrants and crime rates, or how more people voting doesn't necessarily translates into more democracy, data visualization is helping to sell the story.
But in case you want a rest from all development-related graphs during your Xmas holidays, the awards also offer exciting long reads such as this one about an historic artic disaster.

The one gift Santa can't deliver

ICRC has been really squeezing its creative juices lately. After the launch of their successful 'The Right Choice' VR film, created by interactive agency Don't Panic, now they have teamed up with Adam&Eve ad agency to create a video which will remind us that not all families will be reunited this Christmas.

Here, there and everywhere

Several suggestions on how to celebrate International Migrants Day: visit IOM's ongoing Global Migration Film Festival or visit OCHA's Humanitarian Insight website and read the World Humanitarian Data and Trends report, no matter what you decide to do, you will find plenty of good dataviz examples. Although not updated, the Global Flow of People chart is still one of the best visual solutions out there to portrait migration. Finally, from Switzerland, the multi-awarded 6-issue magazine project Migrant does a great job on tackling this complex issue from every possible angle.

December Inspiration

An event
Digital Design Days, a Milan-based event until now, is coming to Geneva next February! More news on the line-up to follow. Meanwhile, you can get your early bird tickets before December 17.

An idea
A good takeaway from the DOTY awards: Good design ideas may not always be attractive to the eye: yes, we are talking about the Surgibox, who took voters' heart (pun intended).

A contest
Best way of ensuring human rights will be understood by future generations? Make kids visualize them. You can see the results of the kids4humanrights drawing contest here.

A forecast
There are as many forecasted design trends for the next year as design websites on the net. Our choice? The one who is aiming at smashing outdated gender and body stereotypes.

A flag
Ai Weiwei has created a flag to mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created from the muddy footprints of Rohingya refugees. He explains further here.

A Xmas gift

So you believe that creative design thinking can be applied to the way our public organizations are run..? Then don't think twice. Treat yourself with this book for this Christmas.

Still not part of us? You can sign up to receive our newsletter and also join our FB Group page? we want to use it as a platform to communicate more regularly, transfer knowledge and share our work. You can also check past newsletters here

Copyright © 2018 UN Designers Group, All rights reserved.

This newsletter has been produced by the UN Designers group, a non-profit organization created with the purpose of raising awareness around design and visual communications in international organizations, as well as help promoting the work done in this field. Our channels are both our physical meetings, usually hosted in UN agencies or other international organizations in geneva, and this e-newsletter.

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