What a creative firm looks like on pure adrenaline
To the citizens of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 12, 2010, was the day their world literally collapsed. And we did our best to make sure their stories weren’t buried along with their city.
On a normal workday, our role at Journey is to help clients tell their stories with compelling words, images and design. But after a crisis of this magnitude, we also do so with great speed. More than a few of our clients are in the thick of it after national and international crises — rushing to get the news out to donors, volunteers and the world.
At the very least, we scramble to update the latest projects heading to press or about to launch on the web. But often, our clients passionately want to do more to get the word out. And we help brainstorm and create the solution.
After Haiti’s earthquake struck, two of our team were on their way to capture the sights, sounds and stories. Immediately upon their return, they worked with the rest of Journey to create a photo-rich brochure and web gallery about the response being coordinated by our client, the EFCA.
At the same time, we were working alongside another long-term publishing partner, World Vision, to tell its earthquake response story.
World Vision has worked in Haiti since 1980, and the organization’s 370-plus staff and 51,000 sponsored children were at great risk. Within days of the quake, World Vision had sent in its own writer and photographer. In addition to rushing an update into the current issue, we partnered with the World Vision editorial team to create a 16-page special issue — one highlighting the crisis and the organization’s long-term work on the island.
Still, the Haiti earthquake wasn’t the first time Journey jumped into action after a crisis.
World Vision used Hope in the Heartbreak as both an insert to its summer magazine and as a stand-alone piece highlighting the work of its emergency-response program.
"Without warning, the earthquake cut lives short and shook down the fragile structures of a struggling country. Without hesitation, the world reached out." [excerpt from Hope in the Heartbreak]
We created infographics to help illustrate the widespread effects of the earthquake.
The EFCA used In Search of Solid Ground as an insert to its spring magazine and as a stand-alone brochure communicating the hands-on work it was doing and would continue to do.
Since we had a writer and a photographer on the ground in Haiti immediately after the earthquake, we had an overwhelming amount of images and stories to choose from.
The background texture in this piece — reminiscent of cracked and demolished concrete — was a subtle but intentional way of communicating the devastation in Haiti.
On September 11, 2001, four Journey team members were on a business trip in Little Rock, Ark., with tickets to fly home that same day — tickets now declared useless, because no planes were taking to the skies.
Instead, they drove their rental car the 900 miles home. As the miles ticked by and gas prices climbed almost by-the-minute, they started calling Journey’s clients: We’re not sure what this means, but how can we help?
As soon as they reached Charlottesville, it was a case of all-hands-on-deck. For several clients, Journey rushed through replacement articles for their publications. But the biggest rush came after discussions with Campus Crusade. As the organization’s staff members heard the stories of pain and trauma pouring out of the city, their goal was to create something tangible to comfort the terrified onlookers still wandering the streets.
Within eight days, our team had created and printed 1 million brochures that acknowledged the pain and confusion, and offered hope. A few days later, the client ordered a reprint of another million. By February 2002, more than 15 million of copies of the 16-page “Fallen but not Forgotten” had been printed in multiple languages and versions — blanketing New York City and the Pentagon.
We designed several different covers for Fallen but not Forgotten. Each used a simple yet surreal photograph that captured the essence of the tragedies in New York and D.C.
"Hatred cannot win against the unbridled bravery of the men and women who went into those buildings to serve and to save." [excerpt from Fallen but not Forgotten]
"Hatred cannot win against a people discovering again what we have always known: the meaning of community, the bond of patriotism, the value of helping others." [excerpt from Fallen but not Forgotten]
The day after Christmas, a forbidding wall of water crested and wiped out entire regions of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. This time, none of us was on the road, stranded by the tragedy. Nor swept up in it overseas. Still, we knew that our clients and their contacts were involved.
Specifically, as stories emerged about World Vision’s staff members and work in that region, our team began feverishly updating the current World Vision issue about to go to press.
We believe in our clients and we believe in their mission, and as we helplessly watched news coverage of overwhelming loss, it was our great comfort to know we could be doing something.
With ongoing development work and child-sponsorship programs already active on-the-ground in the tsunami-ravaged region, World Vision was quick to respond.
"We didn't have time to grab anything at all, except for the children." [excerpt from Eyes of Sorrow, Arms of Comfort]
After the flurry to update and then print the magazine, our printing partners confessed that working with these pages in pre-press had moved each of them deeply. They were glad to be able to do something to help.
America held its breath as Katrina made landfall that fateful Monday morning, downgraded to a Category 4 storm. But then the levies broke.
In addition to immediate magazine updates, we crafted “Higher Ground: The Journey to Hope” for Campus Crusade — helping them once again meet their goal of offering hope to those who would feel most forgotten and most hopeless.
And ”crisis response“ got personal again for Journey when The Salvation Army’s national commander invited our photographer to fly in to New Orleans for a survey of the Army’s response. There was no question of saying no. The resulting photos populated numerous published pieces over the next year, including the organization’s annual report.
We believe in our clients and in their mission, and the faster we help them respond, the more powerful we know their impact will be, for people and communities that desperately need it.
Higher Ground was hand-distributed in affected areas and in kiosks throughout the Gulf Coast area.
In the days after Katrina, we pored over Associated Press photos as they hit the Internet, looking for images that would capture both the reality and a sense of hope.
"The task of putting our lives back together begins with hope." [excerpt from Higher Ground]
Read the articles from Ron Londen & Diane McDougall, our photographer and writer on the ground in Haiti just after the earthquake.
