Emily Carr Students Design for Canadian Red Cross Efforts in Haiti

Communication Design student Shay Namazi in collaboration with Industrial Design student Desmond Wong, (with support from ID student Monica Gautier and the supervision of faculty Louise St. Pierre) have been working via daily communication with Haiti to design and develop a set of visual instructions for water purification. The design took more than ten iterative steps, as the drafts were reviewed and tested by field workers in Haiti, who then requested modifications so that the graphics suited the local context.

The most current draft has been approved by the Canadian Red Cross and the Haitian Red Cross, and is now being reviewed by the International Federation to see if it can be used by all Red Cross Agencies operating in Haiti (ie the French Red Cross, Spanish Red Cross, Canadian Red Cross, etc). Emily Carr's collaboration is being coordinated by disaster management engineer Owen Lee, who is on site in Haiti and has identified 500 families who do not have access to potable water to be the first to receive purification tablets and test the instructions.