"...the Earthquake is still shaking the earth and our hearts."

This simple statement was made earlier this week by Joy Yin, one of the industry specialists participating in COLLABOR8, the 2008 Creative Waves project linking students in China and Australia to explore sustainable graphic design across cultural boundaries. Joy opened a dialogue for everyone involved in COLLABOR8 to share how the earthquake affected their world and to discuss designers' roles in responding to large scale disaster.

Throughout the Icograda network, I've seen a broad range of responses to emergency preparedness or when faced with disaster. Individually and collectively, designers have donated time and resources and have developed tools.

When I was in Cuba last year, I was impressed by the clear process and information available on how to react should a hurricane make landfall on the island.  

Last year, DesignSingapore Council ran a program Design&Disasters to create designs that could be deployed to minimise effects of disasters, in the 5 stages of disaster occurrences: 1. Resilience 2. Respond 3. Rescue 4. Restore 5. Rebuild. The results were showcased during the 2007 Singapore Design Festival and the Design&Disasters publication was distributed to selected schools, designers, and relief organisations, both in Singapore and internationally.

The aftermath of 2005's Hurricane Katrina in the United States brought the US design community together through the website Displaced Designer, a joint effort of AIGA and The Chopping Block. The website created links between designers who needed assistance to get their studios back up and running and those who were willing to help.

Now, the faculty and students from the School of Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing are assisting China's in relief efforts by creating communications materials and the Sichuan Graphic Design Association is inviting designers internationally to create posters under the theme of 'Unified Determination' to express and commemorate the resilience of all those affected by this earthquake.

Looking ahead, as efforts in China move from response and rescue, to restoring and rebuilding, I am interested in hearing how design thinking can be applied to mitigate the impact of earthquakes and other large scale disasters in the future. Whether you've been personally invovled or know of case studies and tools developed on this topic, share your experiences and we'll collect them for reference in our Resources section on the Icograda website.

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Brenda Sanderson is Icograda's Managing Director.