Happy World Graphics Day 2009!

Celebrated since 1995, World Graphics Day is held on April 27, the date that ICOGRADA (the international graphic design association) was founded in 1963.

This year, ICOGRADA exhorts: "To mark World Graphics Day 2009, we want to know how you use design to effect change in the world around you."

It had been awhile since I had read it, so I dusted off a link to the First Things First 2000 manifesto.

Good graphic design is incredibly powerful: it can be the difference between a product succeeding or failing, between candidate X or candidate Y winning, between thousands of people showing up for a rally or just staying home. So let's take today to reflect on what we design, who we design for, and how we design - and if we don't like the answers we find, to pledge to change that.

But perhaps more importantly, let's remember that graphic design alone won't save the world: while it's important for our social movements to look good, what's needed most now is good old fashioned person-to-person organizing - and with May Day coming up, maybe it's high time we got our workplaces unionized?