EDITORS: Graphics available upon request.

ANN ARBOR—Students at the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design have met the challenge set by the Chlorine Free Products Association and walked away as prize winners for their poster designs. Challenged by the Association and their professor, Dennis A. Miller, the U-M students had to produce a design attractive to fifth- and sixth-graders that would promote awareness of toxicity levels in manufactured products.

This multi-tiered, semester-long research project about the social responsibility of persuasive media such as graphic design brought a first place medal to Nate Streu, a second place honor to Lauren Merrill, a third place rating to Kelly Labash. Their posters will be printed and distributed this spring. This is not the first time U-M students have swept the awards in the college competition. In 1998, they swept all but one of the awards.

Such partnerships as that between the Association and U-M’s School of Art and Design provides students with “real life” projects with themes, projected goals, client background, and specifications where students explore the word image relationships that are intended for a specific audience, gather and analyze data, and examine how verbal and visual languages derive meaning from context.

Another advantage to such a project is the introduction of U-M students to the possible negative effects their chosen area of study or profession may have on society as a whole. “Many subfields within the graphic design profession make heavy use of paper and ink,” says Miller, “and during the 20th century, printers and designers convinced themselves that the best paper is as white as it can possibly be. As consumers, we accept bright, white paper as the standard, the norm.”

In order to meet these standards set by design professionals, paper manufacturers use chlorine compounds to bleach all color from the wood pulp used in the paper-making process. During the last three decades, the environmental impact of chlorine chemistry has become increasingly apparent with levels of dioxin and other associated chemical compounds rising dramatically in water, fruits, vegetables, meat and fish.

The U-M students strived to state the complex issues surrounding the environmental impact of industrial chlorine chemistry in terms that an audience of elementary school students could understand. “You must find a direct, clear connection between these concepts and their lives, their families, their world,” Miller instructed his class.

And so they did.

School of Art and Design