AIGA Los Angeles is participating in AIGA’s Call to Action: End Gun Violence and is encouraging its members to become part of the collaborative poster conversation online at endgunviolence.aiga.org. Launched on the second month anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, and initiated by AIGA Los Angeles member John Clark of Looking and AIGA Executive Director Ric Grefé,“AIGA: End Gun Violence” is an online gallery of posters submitted by AIGA members that address the detrimental effect of gun violence to our communities.

Over twenty posters have already been posted online at endgunviolence.aiga.org with several posters submitted from Los Angeles chapter members. There is a challenge to this campaign, how can someone in the design profession address issues that matter and do real and lasting good.

Three months have passed since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school. Slate.com has been tracking homocides from gun violence since the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. The number as of this post, over 2,659 since December 14, 2012 is overwhelming. At a political level, state gun laws, recently introduced, have swung in radical opposite directions with Colorado and New York introducing strict gun control laws while South Dakota and Georgia have introduced legislation encouraging gun ownership.

While it is encouraging that gun legislation is taking place, the conversation is not over. The New York Times recently ran an article about gun violence in Chicago. Over a fifteen year period, 8,083 people were killed from gun violence. This number paled in relation to the estimated 36,000 people that were shot and wounded not to mention the many more who have sufferred emotionally as witnesses or friends and families of victims.

March is membership month for AIGA, a month where the benefits of being a member of the largest professional design association in the U.S. is discussed. What could be more beneficial than a community that gets together and addresses real issues together. Submit a non-partisan poster today.

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Dan Hanasono is a Graphic Designer at Looking in El Segundo, Co-Chair of Communications for AIGA Los Angeles, and so as not to be a hypocrite, submitted a poster himself.