Sad but true: unfortunately we are forced to call off the workshop that was scheduled for the end of April in Tbilisi, Georgia. We are very sorry for this inconvenience and beg pardon to all those who were planning to attend that workshop.
But there are also some great news! The AAS College in Thessaloniki, Greece, will host a new workshop, starting June 18. The instructor will be Antoine Abi Aad of Lebanon. If you live in Greece and you’re a student, a designer or a NGO professional and you would like to participate, send an email at dmd (at) posterfortomorrow.org. You will receive a text based form to fill in and send us back.
 

March 8th is Woman’s Day across the globe. We really couldn’t think of a better moment to open the call for entries for our 2012 edition, dedicated to the hot issue of Gender Equality. It’s finally time to get started with the creative work!

The condition of women has undergone undeniable improvements during the last century. But these improvements haven’t happened everywhere and even where they have been the strongest, well, they are far from being strong enough.

Gender inequality still lingers unchallenged: it’s one of those things that are hard to see precisely because they are right in front of our eyes.
That’s why we ask all of you to see beyond the status quo and imagine a different future. We need gender equality now, because more opportunities for women are more opportunities for us all.

The jury members of this current edition are:
Majid Abbasi (Iran), Cristina Chiappini (Italy), Gitte Just (Denmark), Maria Kurpik (Poland), Alain Le Quernec (France), Malte Martin (France), Leila Musfy Awad (Lebanon), Carolina Rojas (Colombia), Serge Serov (Russia), Paula Troxler (Switzerland), Rene Wanner (Switzerland) and Guy Schockaert (Belgium) as moderator.

Competition Calendar:
Call for entries open: 8 March 2012
Call for entries close: 10 July 2012
Online jury vote: 20 July - 10 September 2012
Live jury session, Paris: 5 October 2012
Worldwide exhibitions opening: 10 December 2012

Available downloads:
Download the complete call for entries right here and right now.
The brief is also available in a number of languages on the right hand of this page.
If you'd like to read the small prints, please download our contest regulations.

How to upload your poster:
Register to our website and upload your finished designs by logging into your account.
You’ll find the submission form at the botton of your personal account page.
Submissions must be JPG files, 2953x4134 pixels in size, 150DPI in resolution and in RGB colour space.
Files must be smaller than 10mb.

Please note:
To upload your design you’ll need to be registered on our website. You can do that by clicking on the “sign up” button at the top of our page.
Send in your artwork early to avoid last minute problems. Contest deadline is on 10 July 2012.
Do not try to send images in a different size, resolution or file format: the system will not accept your files.
Files larger than 10mb won't be accepted and heavier files in the 8-10mb range will often block our system, if you can't upload your file please try to reduce the export quality settings.

Draw Me Democracy is a series of poster design workshops organized by 4 tomorrow, the same association that founded and organized poster for tomorrow since 2009. This new project is one of the few global projects that UNDEF, the United Nation Democracy Fund, has ever financed.

The aim of DMD is to help young artists, designers and communication professionals in taking an active role in the democratic process and human rights advocacy initiatives in their own country. It aims to do so by helping them to find their inner creative voice and strengthening their knowledge in the fields of design, social communication and advocacy advertising.

In short, the workshops will empower today’s communicators to make them part of their country's future.

Some may call this plan too ambitious. We call it brave. We call it necessary.

Here are some details: next April and May, Draw Me Democracy will set-up and roll-out 12 workshops, all free of charge and held by outstanding professionals, in 12 cities across several countries in Africa and Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Would you like to take part in one of the workshops or are you just eager to know more? Check out the Draw me Democracy website and register online to one of the workshops.

We are thrilled to disclose the brief for the new edition of poster for tomorrow: “Gender Equality Now!”

The condition of women has undergone undeniable improvements during the last century. But these improvements haven’t happened everywhere and even where they have been the strongest, well, they are far from being strong enough.
Gender inequality still lingers unchallenged: it’s one of those things that are hard to see precisely because they are right in front of our eyes.
That’s why we ask all of you to see beyond the status quo and imagine a different future.

As for the past, at closing of the call for entries, poster for tomorrow will entrust your artworks to a jury of renowned designers. The best 100 posters will be displayed in multiple locations worldwide opening 10 December, “A Day for Tomorrow”.

But there will soon be plenty of time to deal with the details and also with the novelties of this 2012 edition. Now is the time for the really important stuff.

We need gender equality now, because more opportunities for women are more opportunities for us all.


Competition Calendar:
Call for entries open: 8 March 2012
Call for entries close: 10 July 2012
Online jury vote: 20 July - 10 September 2012
Live jury session, Paris: 5 October 2012
Worldwide exhibitions opening: 10 December 2012


Download the brief (PDF in English)

Brief also available in:
Español
Français

Good luck to everyone!

So here we are again back to our daily routine.
But, when it comes to Poster for tomorrow, the only routine is the constant effort to conceive and organize new inspiring projects.

The 2011 edition of Poster for tomorrow came to a glorious ending with the rolling of the worldwide exhibition tour in December and (we're sure you have already guessed where we are heading here) the new 2012 brief is already on its way.

The topic together with all the other relevant details will be revealed to the world next monday, January 16th. We're extremely excited by the chosen topic, its social and cultural implications and the artistic possibilities it will surely open up. By now we can only anticipate that… ok, just kidding.

You will have to wait until next monday! 

We're not used to boast our achievements, and indeed this note doesn't intend to do so, but please let us share with all of you our joy and happiness in seeing the closing of a very special day: our first day for tomorrow.

Despite the difficulties and the inevitable shortcomings which we became familiar with as we were running this project, for us it was a success. That's because many of the 30 exhibitions we managed to get organised around the world, are in countries which are seldom part of the graphic design discourse. For this reason, we hope to have started a dialogue that will continue in the future to include new players in an industry that is in dire need to redefine its scope and ambitions.

Moreover, we were able to shed some light on a topic such as the Right to Education. There's a strong need for us to be aware of this problem and its consequences, which limits people's potential in the South as well as in the North of the world.

Our wish is that the posters that we collected in the exhibitions and the book will fuel debate - hopefully not only within the graphic design circle, but in civil society as a whole.
In the next few days we'll try to share with you what we achieved today by pictures and more so please keep tuned!

With exhibitions confirmed from India to Ecuador and from the US of A to Botswana, chances are there's a Poster for tomorrow "Right to Education" event near you.

Check out the "Events" tab on our Facebook page or follow this link to read the list directly on our website, complete with all the details you need to come and celebrate with us the International Human Rights Declaration anniversary.

We finally let it out! It’s the catalogue of our 2011 edition. Opened by a foreword from Irina Bokova, Unesco’s Director-General, designed by dutch maestro Ingrid Van Der Meulen and written by celebrated English author Will Georgi, it makes an outstanding holiday season gift.
What are you wainting for?! Click here to read more about the book and its content, browse the gallery and have access to the online shop.

We're looking for couriers to help us with the poster shippings for the exhibitions that will be held next 10 December, "a day for tomorrow".

You could give invaluable help to our organisation by flying our posters with you. Please get in touch if you're interested and if by chance you are leaving from Paris or any large city in Europe between 21 November and  5 December and you're headed to one of the following countries:
Bolivia, Botswana, Canada, Colombia, Georgia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Morocco, Uganda, Pakistan, Peru, Tunisia, Ukraine and the United States.

Even if you can't help us this time, in case you're a frequent traveller  please get in touch. We're building a small database of people that happens to travel frequently between Europe and America, Africa, Asia. If you're such a person or if you know someone who does travel often along these routes, please forward this message to them.

Please send us an email if you'd like to help!
 

Today is the day. We are excited to publish, for the world to know, the names of all the designers that took part, with their work and their passion, to the current edition of poster for tomorrow. They're more than a thousand and it is only thanks to them that this edition has been such a success so far.

This year and for the first time we'd like to pay a small tribute not only to those whose work has been acknowledged by poster for tomorrow's jury by being selected for the exhibition but also to those that made it to the shortlist. All their names are now published in specific pages on our website.

If this wasn't enough, we have a treat for your eyes and your intellect: the gallery of the 10 posters that will be included in the permanent collections of the prestigious design museums around the world that collaborate with our project.

UNESCO joins poster for tomorrow as a partner for the 2011 exhibitions dedicated to the "Right to Education".

Poster for tomorrow is delighted to announce the new partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This partnership represents a fitting climax the current edition of the contest, which is devoted to the “Right to Education”.

In the words of Irina Bokova, Director-General of Unesco:

“This contest has mobilized some 2700 participants throughout the world and among their contributions 100 posters have been selected which will make it to a catalog book e a globe-trotting exhibition.
This is a great opportunity to wear the colors of education as a fundamental human right in a way that will reach a new and different audience.
It is also a way to send a strong message of solidarity that emphasizes the importance of education. Education is an empowering tool that makes each and every child, boy or girl, man or woman stronger and in so doing enables them to lead an authentic and dignified life and to participate fully in the world around them.
I congratulate poster for tomorrow and each participant for this wonderful initiative.”

The exhibitions will open all around the world on the same day, to celebrate the International Day of Human Rights, with UNESCO as a global partner.

Exhibitions in Bolivia, Botswana, Colombia, Ecuador, Georgia, Ghana, Germany, Guinea, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Marocco, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia, Venezuela, Ukraine and USA are already confirmed.

The Poster for tomorrow 2011 “The right to education” catalog book

The book comes in three languages: English, French and Spanish, with a preface by Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO. It features the 100 posters selected for the global exhibitions, plus chapters on the Pan African Workshops that poster of tomorrow has been promoting and organizing in 2011 as well as news about our future project “Draw me Democracy” funded by UNDEF (the United Nations Democracy Fund) that will kick off next year.


About UNESCO

UNESCO works to create the conditions for dialogue among civilizations, cultures and peoples, based upon respect for commonly shared values. It is through this dialogue that the world can achieve global visions of sustainable development encompassing observance of human rights, mutual respect and the alleviation of poverty, all of which are at the heart of UNESCO’s mission and activities.

During 2011 posterfortomorrow has been running a series of workshops across Africa to give young African designer the chance to work with some of the leading designers in the world.

Now that experience is drawing to a fantabulous final stretch with the last 3 workshops of this edition of the Pan African Workshops project.

Two of these workshops will take place simultaneously - amazing, yes - in Uganda and Guinea, starting on monday 24th of October. In Uganda, Marteen van de Vijfeijken from Netherlands will be hosted by The Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts of Makerere, while in Guinea the Centre of Formation Informatique (CRIFIG) of Mamou will host Bertrand Nicolle from France.

The third and final workshop will happen a bit later, starting on monday 12th of December in Congo, where the Académie des Beaux Arts of Kinshasa will welcome Vincent Janssens from Belgium.

Our fight for the right of education across the whole world continues. Learn more on the rest of our website.

The last 6 and 7 October we held the live jury voting for the 2011 edition of Poster for Tomorrow in our Paris headquarters.
Alain Le Quernec chaired a 9 jurors strong panel, moderated by Guy Schockaert and made up by designers such as Michal Batory, Joanna Gorska, Yuri Gulitov, Giancarlo Iliprandi, Ruth Klotzel, Sophie Thomas and Niklaus Troxler.

They selected the best 100 entries amongst the 400 artworks shortlisted by our preselection committee, a panel composed by 50 women and 50 men working in the design, media and advertising industries. Their role was to review and select online the best 400 posters amongst 2780 entries coming from 88 countries we received this year.

Ten outstanding posters have been picked by the jury to enter the permanent collection of renowned design museums around the world: Dansk Plakatmuseum, Design Museum Gent, Graphic Design Museum Breda, Lahti Poster Museum, Les Arts Décoratifs, Museum für Gestaltung, Political Graphics, Victoria and Albert Museum, Wilanów Poster Museum.

Many of you already contacted us to know if their poster was selected and to know if we're going to publish a list of all the winners. In the next few days we'll proceed to inform all the shortlisted and selected posters designers contacting them directly by email, so please wait for us to get in touch with you. At the end of this process, an online list containing the names of everyone who participated, the shortlisted posters designers and the authors of the selected posters will be published on this website.
In the meantime, please take a minute to fill up your account information so that it will show up correctly in our gallery in case your work is included.

WORLDWIDE EXHIBITIONS AND CATALOGUE
The 100 posters selected by our jury will be and exhibited around the world on "a day for tomorrow" the next 10 December, International Human Rights Day. The posters will be available also as a catalogue, prefaced by UNESCO Director-General Irena Bokova.
The flagship Paris exhibition will open its doors to public on December the 8th at Les Arts Decoratifs.
 

SAY NO TO DEATH PENALTY!
Raise your voice against legal murder! Troy Davis was convicted on the basis of witness testimony – seven of the nine original witnesses have since recanted or changed their testimony. He has survived three previous execution dates, because people like you kept the justice system in check! Let Georgia authorities know you oppose the death penalty for Troy Davis! 

Davis continues to face execution on Wed., Sept. 21 at 7 pm EDT.

TAKE ACTION! Join Amnesty International's petition and sign

Today 15th September has been declared International Democracy Day by the UN. No other day would be better for us to announce that Poster for Tomorrow is going to launch a new project: “Draw me Democracy!”, with the financial support of UNDEF, the United Nations Democracy Fund.

This challenging project will span over two years and involve a number of countries around the world, from Latin America to Africa to Asia. It's one of the very few global projects that the UNDEF has ever financed since its foundation. To accomplish its ambitious objectives, the project has been funded for a total of 175.000 USD.

In these countries, we're going to run 12 workshops with the aim of empowering designers and civil society organisations by developing their communication skills.
To read all about the project, please download one of the press release PDFs below, available in a number of languages.

Click to download:
English
French
Spanish
Arabic
Georgian

8 September, International Literacy Day!

According to data from UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics, 793 million adults – most of them girls and women - are illiterate. A further 67 million children of primary school age are not in primary school and 72 million adolescents of lower secondary school age are also missing out their right to an education.
More than half the adult population of the following 11 countries are illiterate: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Haiti, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone. South and West Asia account for more than half (51,8%) the world’s adult illiterate population, ahead of sub-Saharan Africa (21,4%), East Asia and the Pacific (12,8%), the Arab States (7,6%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4,6%), North America, Europe and Central Asia (2%).
“The world urgently needs increased political commitment to literacy backed by adequate resources to scale up effective programs. Today I urge governments, international organizations, civil society and the private sector to make literacy a policy priority, so that every individual can develop their potential, and actively participate in shaping more sustainable, just and peaceful societies,” declared UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.

So after the extension, our 2011 competition is now closed for entries. We hope the extension gave everyone had enough time to get their posters in…

At the last count we had received 2780 posters which we're extremely happy with. These posters will now be judged by our online jury over the next 50 days. The online jury is formed of 50 men and 50 women from all over the world (from 45 countries to be exact) and is made up of graphic designers, charity workers, teachers and people from a variety of disciplines.
We'd like to take this opportunity to thank a lot of people, so here we go…

Thank you to: everyone who entered the competition (and good luck!), all the teachers and professors who incorporated poster for tomorrow in your classes, all our supporters and endorsers and you for reading!

We'll be in touch with more news soon, watch this space...

Poster for tomorrow's 'Right to education' call for entries deadline has been extended for 48 hours. We hope this will give a chance to participate to anyone who's experiencing technical issues. Don't hesitate to contact us if you're having any problem with uploading your poster entry.

poster for tomorrow’s poster competition for 2011 is open for entries until midnight (CET) on Sunday, July 10th. So as of today, there are still ten more days for you, or anyone else that's interested, to submit a poster on the theme of the right to education for all. You can find more details, and upload your posters at posterfortomorrow.org. Go, go go!

As ever, the best entries as selected by our online and live juries, will be published in a catalogue and exhibited around the world on December 10th, International Human Rights day.
The competition will be judged in two stages: first by an online jury of 100 people from more than 45 different nationalities from a wide variety of professional backgrounds; then second by a 'live' jury of designers in Paris in October.


Pan African Workshop Update
The first set of our Pan African Workshops are complete! 9 workshops have been given in 8 countries across the continent, from Morocco to South Africa, with a huge amount of success. These are just two of the many pieces of positive feedback we had from students on the workshops:

This from Zimbabwe:
"I just want to thank you very much for the wonderful human and designer Götz Gramlich! The students have been blown away by his talent and also his humility! It's an experience they will not forget in their lives and he has opened up their eyes to the myriad of possibility in the world of design."
And this from Botswana:
"I would just like you to know how impressed I have been with Joel in this workshop. It has been a wonderful, instructive and inspirational experience for all - thank you for including us and congratulations on a magical idea."

The good news is that we have three more workshops planned for September in Congo, Uganda, and Burkina Faso. Designers will be announced in September, and these will be the last workshops we arrange for 2011.

New Supporters
We are proud to announce that the French Ministry for Education, youth, social and local community life has become a patron of poster for tomorrow. We hope that together we will develop collaborations and relationships with French colleges, schools and high schools, with the aim of organizing and proposing graphic design workshops based on social topics. Which is great news!

And we are equally proud to say that Institut Polanais in Paris is supporting our 2011 edition. With these new patrons on board we feel that we're moving towards more concrete action and a more tangible outcome every year; we'd like to thank everyone who is already involved and hope that there's much more to come!

From June 13th to 16th, 22 Kenyan students from BIFA (Buruburu Institute of Fine Arts) participated to a workshop organized by poster for tomorrow and held by Antoine Abi Aad, lecturer at the Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, Beirut.

"Kenya for Japan" is a workshop organized by poster for tomorrow divided to 3 phases: the passive, the active and the interactive.
2011, Japan was devastated by a series of Earthquakes unseen in the Nippon islands since the 1923. Through dozens of competitions supporting Japan, e-communication proved how popular Japan is, moreover, it proved how effective and emotional is this communication. While it was always common to think of financial help when disasters striked, the Japanese case showed a new form of encouragement: the visual support through social networks and supportive websites around the world : Japan might be more in need of human emotions rather than money.

It's with slightly mixed feelings that we announce that the last of our African Workshops is going to start. Mixed because, well, we're sad it's the last, but at the same time we're enormously proud of what we've achieved. Workshops in eight countries across the continent that have produced a wealth (and enormous variety) of experiences and that we hope have been worthwhile for everyone concerned. We're certainly very happy and the feedback we've received has been hugely positive.

And we hope that our last workshop, in Kenya, will be equally as successful. Antoine Abi Aad is currently on his way from Lebanon to Nairobi to lead a workshop at the Buruburu Fine Arts Institute, 13-19 June. He's going to dedicate his workshop to the tragedy in Japan  earlier this year and its aftereffects. Good luck to everyone involved!

We are proud to announce that the Council of Europe (Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs) has, for the second year running, granted its financial support to poster for tomorrow.

Having received the Concil of Europe Patronage since its creation, we see the renewal of financial support as a sign of confidence in our actions.

Poster for tomorrow needs your support more than ever. You can become a member of 4 Tomorrow association, buy our iPhone App or simply make a donation.

Nous sommes fiers d’annoncer que le Conseil de l’Europe (Direction Générale des droits de l’homme et des affaires juridiques) a accordé son soutien financier à poster for tomorrow pour la 2e année consécutive.
 
Avoir obtenu le patronage de l'Organisation des 47 depuis la création du Concours, nous voyons dans le renouvellement de son soutien financier un signe de confiance en nos actions.
 
poster for tomorrow a plus que jamais besoin de votre soutien. Vous pouvez devenir membre de l’association, acheter notre l’iPhone App ou tout simplement faire une donation.

This week Joel Holland was in Gaborone, Botswana, Ruth Klotzel at the Stellenbosch Academy, South Africa and Götz Gramlich at the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts in Harare, Zimbabwe

We've received these two quite wonderful pieces of feedback on their work from the course leaders, which are genuinely heart warming. Thanks and congratulations to Joel, Götz and Ruth and everybody else involved.

"I just want to thank you very much for the wonderful human and designer Götz Gramlich! He's an amazing guy in every way and we feel incredibly lucky to have him here! The students have been blown away by his talent and also his humility! It's an experience they will not forget in their lives and he has opened up their eyes to the myriad of possibility in the world of design.

Best, Saki"


"I would just like you to know how impressed I have been with Joel in this workshop. I have a few of my students taking part as well as the designers and it has been a wonderful, instructive and inspirational experience for all - thank you for including us and congratulations on a magical idea - I suspect that this is the norm of response - power to you.

All the best, Steve."

This week we've held workshops in South Africa and Tunisia: at the Durban University of Technology, led by Leandro Castelao and at École Supérior des Sciences et Technologies du Design, led by Florence Robert. 

You might have noticed we're doing our best to keep you posted about our activities in Africa. Now we decided to go to the next level and we put together a 90 seconds video to make it easier to understand what we're trying to put together, and why we'd really appreciate people to lend us a hand.

In case you'd like to help us and a donation is out of your budget, please share the video through your Facebook or Twitter account. A single click might get us a long way.

So here's the video. Many thanks go to ESAV Marrakech students, who not only designed the posters featured in the stop motion sequence, but are the clip's protagonists too. Shout-outs also to video editor Fadi Azzi, and voiceover speaker Johanna Worton.

If you were thinking of putting together a blog entry about our project (thank you, we owe you one) you might as well be interested in checking out our new galleries on Flickr. All the pictures are available in high resolution upon request:
Poster gallery and photo gallery of the Morocco workshop held at ESAV, Marrakech.
Photo gallery of the Ghana workshop held at KNUST University in Kumasi.
Poster gallery and photo gallery of the Ghana workshop held at ISAG, Dubréka.

Here's also a little update about the workshop schedule.

Upcoming workshops:

Nairobi, Kenya
Buruburu Fine Arts Institute, 13-19 June
led by Antoine Abi Aad

Gabarone, Botswana
Maru-a-Pula School | 16-20 May
led by Joel Holland

Durban, South Africa
Durban University of Technology, 9-13 May
led by Leandro Castelao

Stellenbosch, South Africa
Academy of Design and Photography, 16-20 May
led by Ruth Klotzel

Harare, Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, 16-20 May
led by Götz Gramlich

Den Den, Tunisia
École Supérior des Sciences et Technologies du Design, 9-13 May
led by Florence Robert

Cities where there are schools that would like to host our workshops,
but we lack fund to do it:

Bamako, Mali
Ouagadoudou, Burkina Faso
Jaunde, Cameroon
Addis Abeba, Ethiopia
Windhoek, Namibia
Johannesburg, South Africa
Kinshasa, Congo
Luanda, Angola
Lusaka, Zambia

In case you'd like to know it, the music we used as a soundtrack for the video comes from 74 year old Ghanian national Ebo Taylor, who recorded it for his first international release: "Love and Death". The track is available as a free download, and the album is worth every penny. Please check it out at: http://www.ebotaylor-loveanddeath.com/ 

At the start of the week we heard from Vincent Michéa, who's just finished his workshop in Dubreka, Guinea. It's fair to say that he's had a slightly different experience to the previous workshops in Morocco and Ghana.

Internet contact was limited, there was no water or electricity for the duration of the week and temperatures were from 30° to 35° plus humidity. The 28 students made their posters by hand and or finished them in Word (that's Microsoft Word).
Click here to check out the poster gallery we posted on our Facebook page. 
 

This was Vincent's brief report:
"The conditions were very tough and without Souleymane's help, things would have been even more complicated. Everything finished as well as was possible, but the students need everything. There's no material, no budget, nothing."

All of this brings home the reality of what we're doing in Africa and why we feel it's so important to do.

We would like to thank Vincent, Souleymane and everyone who helped put the workshop together and we'd like to remind you that you can still donate to make other workshops in Africa possible this year. Please.

Natalia Delgado has just completed her workshop at the Kwame Nkrumah University. It's quite an incredible story. The long and short of it is that she led two workshops of 75 students over a week, but it's a story that can be told much more eloquently by the series of photos we'll attach to this post and this piece of feedback from a student:

"Poster for tomorrow has really been an eye opener. I was really inspired and enlightened about design in general. I think there is a difference between getting stuff in ones head and being able to teach and getting the stuff and finding the appropriate process to teach it. Natalia was able to deliver and to me is the best teacher and designer I have met so far. Her process and technique really work for me. I hope to seeing her some other time with more stuff. It was really fun having her around. Now that she is going I know I can face the challenge out there. I know that."

To say this is why do poster for tomorrow is perhaps stating the obvious, but, well, these sorts of comments are really heartwarming.

We'd like to thank Natalia for her time and effort, her students for their enthusiasm and congratulate everyone on a great week.

In other news, Vincent left for Guinea on Friday. There hasn't been any water or electricity in Duberka since last tuesday, so we wish him and everyone all the best at a difficult time.

It's a Friday, which means that it's time for an update on our Pan-African workshops! 

 Our Pan-African workshops are rolling…

Every year poster for tomorrow chooses a basic human right to draw attention to. We then invite the global design community to make posters on this theme that are exhibited around the world on International Human Rights Day, December 10th. We passionately believe that one poster is a start, but one hundred, one thousand, constitute a movement that can’t be denied.

As we announced last week, we will be hosting a series of workshops across Africa to give young African designers the chance to work with some of the leading designers in the world.

And we're very pleased to announce that Clairefontaine have become a partner of our workshops. They've kindly offered to cover a significant amount of the costs for the workshops, for which we're extremely grateful. But not only that, they will launch a series of academic notebooks with 10 posters from our "Right To Education" poster competition on the cover as part of their longstanding Education campaign. Chapeau!

We're overjoyed to have Clairefontaine as a partner, but at the risk of repeating ourselves, we still need more help to make these workshop happen. We're going to hold workshops in Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia and Zimbabwe, led by a team of leading designers including Reza Abedini (Iran), Michal Batory (France), Yossi Lemel (Israel), Guy Schockaert (Belgium), Niklaus Troxler (Switzerland), amongst others.

The more support we have, the more workshops we can host and the more people we can help. So every little helps! If you would like to support this project you can it by doing a donation through PayPal. Or if you'd like to help in any other way, please let us know! Email Hervé Matine at: news@posterfortomorrow.org

As well as the poster competition, this year for the first time we’ll be running a series of workshops across Africa to give young African designers the chance to work with some of the leading designers in the world.

We believe passionately that young people are the future of the world, and that with these workshops we can provide young African designers with a set of tools and contacts that will give them better access to the international market, and to set up a longer term platform for design in their own countries.

We will host workshops in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. This will be led by a team of leading designers from across the world working in Europe and America, such as Reza Abedini (Iran), Michal Batory (France), Yossi Lemel (Israel), Guy Schockaert (Belgium), Niklaus Troxler (Switzerland), amongst others.

But to do all this, we need help. Financial help to be precise. We’re extremely grateful for any contribution. In return you’ll become a partner of our project and be featured in our annual book that will be published at the end of 2011.

If you would like to support this project you can it by doing a donation through PayPal. If you'd like to help in any other way, please let us know! Email Hervé Matine at: news (at) posterfortomorrow (dot) org
If you would like to know more details, please read the full newsletter, available in French and Spanish too.

We're pleased to announce that in 2011 we'll be addressing the right to education for all; irrespective of gender, religion or handicap.
Incredibly 121 million children worldwide are not in primary school, despite universal primary education being a right "guaranteed" in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a UN Millennium Goal; while illiteracy rates are still staggeringly high even in countries where a child's right to education is guaranteed. In France illiteracy has become a "cause nationale" (with 3.1 million people unable to read, write or count), the rate of illiteracy in the U.K. is "unacceptably" high according to M.P.s, while according to the National Adult Literacy Survey, 42 million adult Americans can't read (and current estimates have the number of functionally illiterate adults in the U.S. increasing by approximately 2,500,000 persons each year). This is truly a problem that affects us all.

We've chosen to fight for the right to education for all as we believe that education gives people across the whole world the chance to break the cycle of poverty; to live in a more equal world, without discrimination, where everybody has the same chance to learn the same skills and enjoy the same success. To enjoy a better tomorrow!

The United Nations General Assembly has adopted a third resolution calling for a universal moratorium on the use of the death penalty. The result is that the Secretary-General is requested to report to the General Assembly at its sixty-seventh session on the implementation of this third resolution.

So while this isn't the perfect result we were hoping for, it represents significant progress. We can now see the beginnings of a genuine global movement towards abolition - and that can only be a good thing.

We'd like to congratulate everyone who was worked towards this and we hope for more good news in the future! Until then, the fight goes on...

And happy Holidays from everyone at poster for tomorrow.

It might not roll off the tongue exactly, but today, December the 10th is Global Human Rights Day. It commemorates the adoption and proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights back in 1948 – the first global enunciation of human rights ever. It’s a big day. And that’s why from next year we’re going to centre our activities on this date.
Yes, from 2011 the 10th of December will also be poster for tomorrow day. Just like this year we’ll aim to host as many exhibitions in as many places as possible based on one human rights issue (plus some new activities), but from next year the date will always be December the 10th.
We’ll tell you more about more what we’re going to do in 2011 when we know more ourselves, but we will announce next year’s theme very soon to give everyone plenty of time to get organised.
But that’s the future (and very good it looks too). For now we’d like to thank everyone who helped us put on more than fifty exhibitions on 10/10/10: our patron The Council of Europe; all those who endorsed us - The World Coalition against the Death Penalty, FIDH, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, Mairie de Paris; all our ambassadors and every single friend of poster for tomorrow ; all the museums, art schools and Universities; and our partners Les Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Ecole Intuit.lab and Etapes. Merci beacoup! Et à la prochaine…

 We're proud to announce that we've just launched our first ever app for iPhones/iPads/whatever form of Apple goodness you want to put it on. 

It's not free, but all proceeds will go to sustaining poster for tomorrow's activities. At 2.99€ it's not expensive either, especially as it's the first and (we're going to say) best social communication app out there. 

It's going to be updated soon with our "Death is Not Justice" posters, and for the moment you can browse our "The Pencil is Mightier than the Sword gallery, test yourself on quizzes on Freedom of Expression and you'll be kept up to date with our news as it happens. 

You can buy it via the iTunes Store here. 

You can see some pictures of it on our Facebook page, or watch this video below:

The “Death is not Justice” exhibitions organised by poster for tomorrow are now opening in around 50 locations. We fell short of our 100 cities objective, but we can’t really complain.

Around four months ago our local organiser in Northern Ireland asked to Belfast City Council for permission to use the Belfast City Hall for a poster for tomorrow exhibition. In September the city council finally gave its approval after two deliberations, the first one dating back to June.

So when the final posters had been determined, we supplied the city council with a copy of the posters that were going to be exhibited, only to discover that the local councillors from the Democratic Unionist Party, the larger (and ruling) of the two main unionist political parties in Northern Ireland, were horrified by our pictures and didn't want at least 10 of the ones they considered the most shocking to be exhibited in their city hall.

The story was covered by the Irish News last Saturday. The article contains the thoughts of David Rodway, a DU Party councillor who sees himself as "a relatively open-minded person" who "can't understand why anyone would want to look at images of people being hanged", before calling poster for tomorrow a "communist committee".

The article was illustrated with one of the posters in question, made by Vladimir Sabillon, in which it is possible to see one of Goya's masterworks: "El tres de mayo 1808 en Madrid" inside a human silhouette surrounded by China's national colours. It's remarkable how a 200 years old painting of people being shot, as David Rodway might say, is still able to cause such debate.

There are other parts of the world where poster for tomorrow is not being welcome by governmental institutions. In Pakistan our local contact was arrested and released after three days for having tried to organise an exhibition in his home town. Also our local organisers in Malaysia and in Syria have been arrested on similar grounds.

As Hervé Matine told The Irish News: "we won't be censored by anyone". Many underground exhibitions are being organised at the moment in those countries where the death penalty is most controversial, China and Iran, and our supporters in Belfast are ready to place the posters in the streets if the city council will not allow us to hold the exhibition.

With only just over a month to go, we are announcing our program for 10/10/10, the World Day against the Death Penalty and we're doing it with style using the poster that Alain Le Quernec has made for us. Please spread the love.

We recently sat down with Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel peace prize laureate, to ask for her opinion on the death penalty and activism. You can read her answers below.

She also agreed to launch our new initiative to change your Facebook or Twitter avatar to a picture of yourself holding the “Death is Not Justice” logo.

It’s really easy to do, just download the logo here, print it and take a picture of you (or anyone else you want) holding it. See you on Facebook!

Poster for tomorrow: What is your personal motivation for campaigning against the death penalty? 
Shirin Ebadi: I'm against the death penalty as I am against any form of violence. It is simply barbaric. Moreover, there's always the chance of a mistake in the judicial process - a mistake that is impossible to reverse in the case of the death penalty. 

PFT: Why is it particularly important that people in "democratic countries" (like USA and Japan) that practice the death penalty campaign for universal abolition? 
SE: Because in these countries it is possible for public opinion to pressure the government to demand abolition. This is why it's important for the creative and cultural sectors of society to make the general public aware of the issue.

PFT: What can I do as an artist do to raise public awareness of this issue? 
SE: There are many books written about the death penalty and abolition but sometimes a picture or a cartoon or a painting can be much more effective than a book. People might not have the time or the opportunity to read books on the subject but a quick glance at a poster could have the same result.

We’re delighted to announce that poster for tomorrow received 2094 posters for this year’s competition. The quality was exceptionally high and we’d like to thank everyone who entered; we hope, and we think, that we’ve amassed a body of creative work that can be of real use in the movement towards abolition. 

We're postponing the "Death is not Justice " deadline three days, to give you a little bit extra time to participate. The reason why we're doing so is that we'd like to make sure that everybody who took the effort of designing a poster for the competition will be able to enter it. But many of you had technical issues in uploading their artworks.

Hopefully you'll be able to address those issues in the next few days, with some help coming from our side too – we're trying to handle all your requests as quick as possible.
In case you need assistance, don't hesitate dropping us a line or writing on our facebook page.

The new deadline is Thursday the 22st of July, at midday (12:00), Pacific Daylight time (GMT +7).

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is a 43 year old Iranian woman who was sentenced to death by stoning for alleged adultery.

Her son Sajad and her daughter Farideh started an international campaign that has been already successful enough to prevent the verdict from being carried out. The campaign has been extensively reported on the English newspaper The Guardian, we suggest you to read the available articles to know more about it.

Iran, aware negative publicity that such a display of cruelty brings, put an halt on the execution. However, the review of the verdict is not likely to put Sakineh free, and the death sentence may still be carried out by hanging - the most common execution method in the country.

Sakineh still needs your help. Please sign a petition, or join the cause on facebook to keep the pressure on Iranian authorities and free Sakineh.

Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner is the wife of Hank Skinner, a man who has spent the last fifteen years on Death row trying to prove his innocence.

Hank was convicted of murder on three counts in 1994 and sentenced to death in 1995. However there are numerous unanswered questions and untested evidence to justify his claim of innocence:

he was convicted only on the evidence of a state witness who later recanted her evidence; medical testing before the trial excluded him as a suspect; while key evidence from the crime scene, including the murder weapons, is still be tested for DNA. The state of Texas has denied two motions for this evidence to be tested. It's not sure why. These are grounds (at the very least) for reasonable doubt to be cast on Hank's conviction - a conviction, it should be remembered, that will see him lose his life.

Sandrine has been fighting against the death penalty for the vast majority of her life. She met Hank after being invited by the Lamp of Hope project (set up and run by Death Row prisoners) to correspond with a couple of prisoners on Death Row. After four years of correspondence they started to visit in 2000 and were married in October 2008. Sandrine was kind enough to take time out from her busy schedule to provide us with her perspective on Hank's case and the inherent injustice of the death penalty.

What made you become an active abolitionist?
A long, long time before I met Hank - before I turned 16, a 22 year old man was executed in France. I realized that my country had just cut a young man alive in half in my name and I couldn't believe that my country still engaged in such barbaric practices.

Why do you think the state are withholding DNA evidence in your husband's case?
The main reason is political. The courts do not want to set precedents to start off with. Despite the enactment of the Chapter 64 post conviction DNA bill passed in 2001 in Texas, hardly any Death Row prisoners have been granted relief and particularly not those with strong cases of wrongful conviction. The continued use of Death Penalty and Death Row prisoners for political propaganda by politicians cannot allow for innocence or cover-up to be revealed. Too many people have actively contributed in hiding or covering the truth in Hank's case, they have a lot to lose. The more time goes by, the harder it is to uncover it. A justice system which uses the perfect application of procedures doesn't care for the truth, this system has nothing to do with justice.

What is the reality of being married to an (innocent) man on death row?
Lonely, harsh and nerve-wrecking.

Do you think the recent (and highly publicized) executions in America will sway public opinion nationally or internationally?
This sort of coverage feeds both sides with various and renewed arguments for and against. Public opinion internationally doesn't need to be convinced that America is on the wrong side of the fence; in America it's still wrongly reported and documented by the media for people to listen and aptly comprehend the arguments against the Death Peanlty.

And what does it say that it takes a death for people to realize the gravity of the situation?
Most people who don't know anything about the prison system and the death penalty, the gravity of the situation doesn't touch them, they believe that it will never happen to a loved one, that they're immune from such dramatic situation, until the day it happens to them… The work done by victims' families and exonerees is vital to the abolition cause because people can relate to the horror of the human experience.

Can a legal system, or a country, call itself just if it practices the death penalty?
No, never. This kind of justice belongs to the Middle Ages, it's a barbaric practice and it will inevitably disappear. It is not a matter of whether it will happen, but only when it will happen.

What do you think it will take for abolition to actually happen?
It's going to take courage from politicians to take the politics out of justice. As long as politicians continue to seek public approval on this issue, they will keep hitting their heads against the same wall. Abolition is a moral choice for future generations while public opinion will constantly be swayed by one horrible crime or another. It is also going to take awareness and education on the part of the public; people need to realize that crime is instrumentalized for political purposes and that it has nothing to do with public safety.

And what can people do to make this happen?
People need to be curious, ask questions to their legislators and representatives, ask questions to the media which are mostly spreading politics rather than doing in-depth work on cases. People need to get involved within their communities, their counties, their state and their country.

Could you summarize your objection to the death penalty in one sentence?
The death penalty is torture and vengeance, it doesn't have a place in a civilized justice system.

And what will you be doing on 10/10/10?
I'll be in Paris, talking and participating at different events for the World Day against the Death Penalty. The theme this year is the USA, so I'll be able to share some of my experiences in Texas.

Poster for tomorrow will be present at OFFF, Paris (24-26 June) and the 4th World Forum on Human Rights, Nantes (28 June - 1 July), putting up on display what we've been able to put together so far since our project started not even one year ago.

We hope that our presence at these events will foster useful collaborations in preparation for the next big event on our agenda on October 10 2010, World against Death Penalty.

If you thought about getting in touch with us to see what you might be able to bring to the project, please drop by and have a chat with us. Please check for more information about these events on our facebook page.

You've been waiting for it and here it is, our call for entries poster. It might not be very timely, but it's better late than never...

 We are proud to announce that Poster for Tomorrow has been endorsed by FIDH, aka the International Federation for Human Rights.
FIDH was established in 1922, when it united ten national organisations. Today it consists of 164 human rights organisations in nearly 100 countries.

FIDH’s core mandate is to promote respect for all the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

We're very pleased to be associated with them and with their help we hope we're a step closer to accomplishing our shared aim of universal abolition of the death sentence.

Today, May the 3rd, has been designated by UNESCO as World Press Freedom day. A free press enables all of us to defend our rights by asking for accountability and transparency from governments and businesses and by exposing corrupt and criminal organisations.

According to Reporters Without Borders, 9 journalists have sacrificed their lives to defend this right since the start of 2010. That’s two journalists a month.

It's an ongoing battle that can have tragic outcomes in those parts of the world where governments are more oppressive. At times it's a subtler phenomenon that nonetheless has a tremendous effect in manipulating public opinion in more consolidated, or “liberal”, democracies.

The focus of our current poster competition "Death is not Justice" is the universal abolition of the death penalty. Although the link might not seem obvious, it's only through the free circulation of information that violations of a citizen's basic human rights, such as State ordered execution, can be brought before public attention and openly debated.

According to Amnesty International's statistics and projections, the death penalty is still largely undocumented in the countries where it is practiced with greater frequency, such as Iran and China. The impossibility to track the phenomenon with precise numbers - and names - poses an enormous obstacle to tackling the issue in an open manner.

On UNESCO's website you can find an interesting interview with Mónica González Mujica (as seen kneeling in the photo taken from amdoc.org, as she was being arrested in 1984), the latest World Press Freedom Award laureate.

Her inspiring investigative journalist work can be also found in Spanish on her association website, CIPER Chile (in Spanish), that promotes investigative journalism to empower Chilean society. 

We've been busy behind to scenes to prepare a whole new system to handle users and submissions on our website. It's a small revolution that will make participating to the contest a lot easier. It's also our first step to build a proper online community. 

From today is now possible for you, and for everyone, to register to the website and get an account. Once registered you'll be able to manage in a simple and reliable way all the relevant information about your profile and, most importantly, your submissions. 

This means you'll be able to change your personal information, keep track of your entries and be 100% sure that it's all safely in our database. 

Please click on the "sign up" link on the left corner of the top navigation bar and get ready for the release of our call for entries on April the 10th. 

Photos by Ouyea and Mioi

 In just half an hour or so it will be Nowruz around here, which marks the start of the Iranian new year (1389) - and spring!
Above there’s a persian poem celebrating this - please bear with us if we don’t add the translation, which would hardly do justice to the original.
So, happy Nowruz, and spring, to everybody.

We’re very happy to announce that just yesterday poster for tomorrow has been endorsed by the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.

We hope this agreement will mark the start of a fruitful collaboration with one of France’s most important governmental institutions.

Nowruz (from Farsi, literally "new day") is a non-religious festivity that’s celebrated on the first day of spring in countries like Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and Tajikistan since some 15,000 years ago.
Amongst other things, celebration includes walking on hot coals.

This festivity is particularly important for Iranians, but many of them won’t be able to celebrate it because their loved ones are languishing in prison.

Amnesty International has launched an action to send greetings to Nowruz greetings to seven detainees - the number has been picked according to another ancient tradition related to the celebration.
Some of the detainees are human rights activists but others are scholars, journalists and one graphic designer. You can help these deserving people by letting them know they are not forgotten on a day so important for them. Just design them a nice postcard.

You can find the guidelines on how to send your greetings on Amnesty’s USA site. Please follow them correctly.

Photo by Bertil Vildet

Today’s the world day against cyber censorship, an initiative promoted by our partner organisation Reporters Without Borders. 

Internet censorship varies greatly from country to country, with the most oppressive governments being China, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Iran. It’s striking to see how the countries that practice this form of repression are often the same that enforce capital punishment.

To know more about the campaign, please read the official statement "Enemies of the Internet" on organisation’s website or read the coverage from Global Voices Online.

You can take part to the initiative by simply spreading around the logo of the campaign. Use it on your website or facebook profile. You may download it from Reporters Without Borders website.

It’s the start of our activities in 2010. A new year, a new website, a new theme.

Today we’re launching our plans for 2010 at the World Congress against the Death Penalty in Geneva. Because that’s what we want to achieve this year - draw people’s attention to the injustice of (and hopefully abolish) the death penalty.

Our main man Hervé is in Geneva today presenting our project to hundreds of associations already working against the death penalty. We want to add our voices to theirs to make as much noise as possible this October on 10/10/10, the World Day against the death penalty, so people will listen to us. And we want to ask for your help.

Not just designing a poster either. This year music is going to be part of our activities as well. We also want to make more of our design events, and use them as a platform for people to stand together against the death penalty.

That’s a short(ish) summary of what we want to do this year. If you’d like to know more, please read our press release (here). You’ll find it in a selection of languages on your right hand side.

Speak to you soon,
Ciao,
Tommaso