Displaced Designer

Hello everybody! Due to the overwhelming amount of response and support we are changing things up and adding a handful of new features and resources to this effort. In the interest of time we will most likely just start making changes to this build. New posts are frozen until the new system is in place (keep sending them in tho). We aim to have things up and running even better in 12 - 24 hours.

thank you all!

William Drenttel emailed earlier and contributed two fantastic offers to our listings. Those of you looking for even more resources should check out the full post over at designobserver.com.

On a side note: We are starting to hear from some designers/illustrators in need so keep checking back. This is a two way effort!

We just posted 5 new offers and now have spaces available in 10 different states spread out over the country. Brains on Fire informed us that they have a rather large and furnished space in South Carolina, enough to accomodate a small studio. Have a look at their blog entry about it.

We would like to extend a huge THANK YOU to everybody who has sent us information and leads so far. Keep the help and information coming!

Hello fellow displaced designers and friends. It’s still hard to imagine how much the storm has changed the lives of so many people in such a short period of time. Just 2 weeks ago I was meeting with new clients, art directing photos shoots, and building my business up to where I always wanted it to be. Katrina has been a devistating event for a lot of people, but it has motivated me to do whatever it takes to continue doing what I love. Enough of my rambling, I wanted to post some photos of what I saw yesterday of what the landscape looks like in Jefferson Parish right outside of New Orleans. Thanks to Matt and The Chopping Block as well as Shalin at Noise 13. Coincidently, I was able to finally get through to FEMA today and they have proven to be very helpfull. I was able to register my personal losses as well my business losses. So if you are a freelancer you are eligable for Personal Property Help, Small Business Losses in income, as well loss of equipment. Call as soon as you can. I will be meeting with several designers here in Arkansas and hopefully they can offer some help to myself as well as others. Below are some photos to took when I made the 36 hour journey home to New Orleans :

Scott Simon from SIMONSAYSDESIGN emailed us earlier today to let us know that not only is he an evacuee from New Orleans (currently safe in Arkansas), but that he wanted to help other folks in the Louisiana and Mississippi areas.

Seeing how Scott knows the community and area a lot better than we do, we have invited him to post.

Thanks to Dava at noise13.com for writing and helping out:

“Could we find an empty or donated space closer to the Gulf where companies can also donate desks, computers, phones etc. kind of like a co-op space for designers?”

Well? We know that New York and San Francisco aren’t exactly close to the center of need. Anybody in a position to offer anything along these lines?

Thanks to the many of you who replied with support and those of you who have posted about this and sent links our way… i have a bunch of email to comb through and it’s only been a few hours.

To the individual who anonymously commented with remarks questioning if we are truly “helping the disaster victims”, i offer you a bit of backstory:

After New York was attacked, and we dealt with the immediete loss of familly and friends, and we volunteered and donated, we opened up our studio, (which was much larger then), and allowed two small businesses (that supported families) to get back on their feet. We had something, they had nothing, it’s that simple…

So now, as it’s our turn to watch a diaster destroy the lives, posessions, and livelihood of thousands of individuals. We have donated, we have FedEx’d supplies, we have an empty desk and were going to try and help the same way, it’s that simple…

If you have read this far than you should get the jist of what we are doing here. Instead of just trying to help one person, we are turning to the rest of you in hopes that together we can help dozens (hopefully more) of our Design/Art/Illustration friends who need a place to regroup.

Nothing is too little — an empty desk, an unused conference table, a phone. We have no real idea if this offer or this site will make a difference but we’re going to try. Initially it is our hope that you (the design community) will open your doors to a worthy individual. If so, we need to know. Email us at offer@displaceddesigner.com and we will add you to the offer a desk page.

Additionally, if you want to help us with the operations of this site let us know. We are starting off by hand coding the lists and will swap things over to a more robust database system once this thing takes flight.

We are your biggest fans, help us help those who would help you.
The Chopping Block