United Nations

Harry Pearce and Jason Ching from Pentagram have designed a series of posters for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that highlight the relative merits of drug treatment and rehabilitation around the world. The posters are a training tool specifically aimed at the Russian police, whose country has a particularly poor track record in drug treatment. The posters had to be eye-catching, easy to absorb and not reliant on language. The typographic solution built a simple world map from internationally recognised country abbreviation codes (GB, US, RU, etc). Eight variants were then designed, using colour coding and icons to provide comparative statistics around drug abuse, the incidence of HIV, Methadone and opioid maintenance therapies, and needle and syringe programmes.

Global prevalence estimates of injecting drug users and HIV among injecting users

Opioid substitution therapy: availability in WHO European region

Needle and syringe programmes: global availability

Methadone maintenance therapy in the European Union and Norway from 1967-2002