An exhibition looking at the power of design to change people’s behaviour is featuring a set of posters from Samaritans’ We Listen campaign.
Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?, which is running at the Wellcome Collection in London from 7th September 2017 to 14th September 2018, is the first major exhibition to explore the relationship between graphic design and health.
The We Listen campaign, which encourages people to contact Samaritans before they reach a crisis, launched in February 2015, supported by Network Rail, British Transport Police and the wider rail industry.
Its posters have appeared in train stations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as in hospitals, GP surgeries, in sports stadiums and on the sides of buses.
Each design features the photo of the back of a person’s head and a hidden message where that person is claiming to be fine, but they are not OK at all. One says ‘I’m alright with being single I guess. It’s not ideal for the kids, but they seem to be coping’, the real message being, ‘I’m not coping’.
The campaign has been seen by tens of millions of travellers. Since it launched there has been a fall in the numbers of people taking their own lives on the railways.
The free exhibition, which contains around two hundred objects, also explores the way graphic design has influenced behaviour around smoking, breast cancer, dementia and organ donation. One of the centerpieces is material from the groundbreaking HIV/Aids awareness campaign of the 1980’s, Don’t Die Of Ignorance.
Anyone can contact Samaritans for free any time from any phone on 116 123 (you don’t need credit on your phone and this number will not show up on your phone bill), email [email protected], or visit samaritans.org to find details of your nearest branch.
For more information on Samaritans’ involvement in Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?,please contact the press office on 020 8394 8300 or [email protected].
Note to editors:
- Wellcome Collection is the free visitor destination for the incurably curious. Located at 183 Euston Road, London, it explores the connections between medicine, life and art in the past, present and future.
- Can Graphic Design Save Your Life? was open to the public from 7-14 September.
- For more information about the We Listen campaign here