The Government Has Blood On Its Hands

This is an activism sticker part of the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) AIDS awareness campaign. It is composed of vibrant, contrasting colors with the imagery of a bloody handprint in the center that is surrounded by the words “THE GOVERNMENT HAS BLOOD ON ITS HANDS” on the top and “ONE AIDS DEATH EVERY 10 MINUTES” on the bottom. When searching for queer data, I found visually impactful data few and far between, as well as data in general that specifically targets the queer demographic scarce if present at all. I decided to broaden my sources to the community itself. 

With a lack of popularity and representation in recorded historical data and visualizations, the shocking stats of AIDS deaths, trans youth suicide rates and risks, and hate crimes found themselves on picket signs, flyers, graffiti, stickers, and out of the mouths of the queer community. Here, statistics become a right to be fought for and a cry of injustices out to the populous, rather than figures on a graph bar or pie chart. While statistics of the  LGBTQ+ community would later become more accessible through more data visualization, this history remains the core fire of the LGBTQ+ movement and protest design. Modern designers who wish to design data visualizations with this same impact would benefit from keeping these types of shocking statistics paired with a striking visual.