Hasta La Ideas

Pentagram’s Harry Pearce has designed a series of posters on drugs and health issues to be used in training Russia’s police force

The posters were commissioned by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime which works with local authorities and law enforcement, as part of its mission in the Russian Federation. Each of the posters (which Pearce designed in conjunction with his associate, Jason Ching) deals with a different aspect of drugs policy, such as the use of Methadone, the prevalence of HIV among those injecting drugs and the availability of needle and syringe programmes globally.

The posters (which will be in Russian, the ones shown here are English translations) will be put in in police stations to be used during internal training sessions.

Picking his words carefully, Pearce intimates that the idea is that the posters will help Russian policemen compare what they do to other countries and that in doing so they may see that other police forces around the world operate rather different policies than their own when it comes to these issues.

This isn’t the first project for the Russian police that Pearce has worked on. In May, with assistant Muriel Moukawem, he designed seven coffee mugs for the UNODC. Each of the mugs, intended to be distributed amongst Russia’s law enforcement agencies, is decorated with a short rhyme promoting the UNODC’s drug counselling program and encouraging officers to refer drug addicts in their custody for treatment.