Graphic designers design because they love it. They love coming up with new concepts, with new ways to communicating. And with the environmental and poverty issues creeping up in the news and even the most recent Presidential race, many designers are designing to make a difference.

Working To Fight Climate Change
One such group, called Design Can Change, “works on the belief that our industry can make a positive change by working together.” Specifically, the group aims to use its purchasing power and influence to combat climate change. Design Can Change encourages designers to use sustainable practices in their designs as well as work on environmentally friendly projects and with “green” vendors and supplies whenever possible. Their Web site contains lots of tips and offers facts and solutions to how graphic designers can raise the issue of sustainable thinking to the public. It emphasizes how crucial a graphic designer’s role is when linking an idea to the public.

Working to Get Clean Water to an Alabama Town
Another group, called Project M, uses graphic design to get an important message out to the public: clean drinking water is not a right everywhere in the United States.

Project M is a summer program created by designer John Bielenberg, who challenges young designers (often in college) to design for a cause, not just for design’s sake. Project M was modeled after an architectural program designed for architecture students from Auburn University to design and build innovative houses in poor rural areas. Project M undertakes a new cause every summer: distributing design supplies to displaced Katrina survivors; designing books for a rainforest preserve in Costa Rica; designing a green space in East Baltimore.

This past year, Project M created a Web site and pamphlet to get the word out about residents in Greensboro, Alabama, where 25% of the city’s residents are not connected to the city water supply, and many that do have access, can’t afford the set-up fee of $425 to install a meter. Even if they did, they can’t afford the monthly water bills that would follow. Many get water from shallow wells that are most likely contaminated by their septic systems. The man who designed the city’s water system in the ’70s admitted to being drunk when he did it. The pipes are cheap and break easily, which means bacteria and fertilizer runoff contaminates any water that residents do get. Greensboro is in Hale County, where 34% of children live below the poverty line.

The pamphlet is made of newsprint, and the project is called Buyameter. The pamphlet can be viewed at http://buyameter.org. Buyameter hopes to raise $127,000 to give each house a water meter. The pamphlet opens with “Oprah has one” and continues on to say “you have one, too” before showing photos of residents who don’t have water meters. The black-and-white photos on newsprint are striking examples of how design can sway people’s emotions. I wanted to give right away. The design students used newsprint on purpose; by the time you’re finished looking through the pamphlet, you’re hands are dirty, and the newsprint will easily fall apart when wet. Just like the town is falling apart without ample clean water supply.

I could go on, but these two groups deserve to be noted. If you’re a designer who wants to make a change, it’s not hard to find a nonprofit or a Web site devoted to designers helping others. The opportunities are there if you just look.