The ‘starving artist’ title gets tossed around so much these days when it comes to the freelance designers or graphic artists struggling to make their mark on the art world. But this year for Blog Action Day 08, these so-called ‘starving artists’ are coming together in droves to help reveal the true face of poverty to the masses, so that this pandemic issue may be combated properly. It’s inspiring to see so many working together to leave a lasting mark on the whole world, something that doesn’t happen that often these days.

It has been both commendable and heartwarming to see the response and build-up to this year’s Blog Action Day, as they tackle an all too often avoided and overlooked issue in the world. Poverty. A societally reversible environment that so many worldwide are subjected too, unjustly and unnecessarily. And the online artistic and design communities have come together to do their part to shed some light and assistance on this issue we’ve ignored. Check out how Styletime and Just Creative Designs took on this task, just to name a couple.

When asked to take up this mantle, we are asked to write a post that relates to the field that your blog specializes in. Design is a trickier field to work in relevant topics relating to poverty, but to see the design community joining in this inspiring fight is uplifting. So many approaches being taken to make people aware of this problem…the problem is, keeping them aware. Too often these days, too many people take notice of an issue for a moment, and then that moment moves on. It’s that kind of short sighted focus that has kept this problem growing. In these ADD driven days of our sound-byte society, we need constant reminders that there is a problem that still requires our attention.

So we at Arbenting are committing to the cause for at least a year, and plan to keep the banners waving once a month to rally people to this cause. And we need the help of the design community at large. We need you to do what we do best. Design. We plan to announce a statistic about poverty each month as a design theme for whatever you want to create, banners, posters, flyers, etc… Submit your designs to this Designer Poverty Awareness flickr group if you want them to be a part of this undertaking, and each month, we will feature the designs and a discussion of the statistic that was used. We will announce the statistic for November below, and then sometime during November, we will write a post that features those works, and announces the next month’s statistical theme. This will carry on until October of 2009, keeping the awareness of this important battle raised for a year.

People pay attention to design. They are moved by it. Inspired. Let’s use this to steer their attention where it’s needed the most.

If you’d like to participate, the first staggering statistic we will use is the following:
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.

Without proper education, people’s ability to remove themselves from the poverty that they are trapped in is stripped away, continuing the cycle.