Hope. Don't Trash It.

Society of Illustrators 50th Annual of American Illustrations, 2009, p 297
Client: Viral Hope; Illustrator: Edel Rodriguez

This was a poster created for Viral Hope, an outreach program in New York collecting unused antiretroviral medications for the care of HIV positive victims in Nigeria. The bottom of the poster reads "Patients in Africa are dying to get their hands on your unused HIV meds."
The silhouetted image of hands reaching up is very powerful, and after one reads the message, it's very easy to see how the arms and hands form the shape of a trash can. I like how the small, clean, white type just pops out of the rough, vibrant red background, balancing the large silhouetted imagery. The gold-colored medicine bottle is the focal point. I find my eyes darting constantly back to that small isolated area of gold.
My first impression was a sense of God handing medicine to the needy. But in this case, instead of God, it's the USA. I found this sadly ironic. America is one of the largest consuming nations in the world, and, yet, what we perceive as trash is the difference of life and death to others.
I also had the impression of the large hand representing a mother bird trying to feed all of its hungry, needy children with wide-open mouths waiting for the limited supply of nourishment.