Ruben Pater – an Amsterdam based Dutch designer — has a mission to create visual narratives about complex political issues. By visually translating stories that are untold because they are sensitive or unprofitable, Ruben Pater aims to activate the public interest. As ‘untold stories’ his projects create new relations between journalism and design. His ‘Drone Survival Guide’ received wide attention in 2013 as an educational tool on drones, functioning as a political statement. Other projects are ‘the First Dutch Flood Manual’ (2011), a research into disaster communication in times of climate change, and ‘Double Standards’ (2012), a research about maritime trade and Somali piracy.

 

He studied graphic design in Breda, and later at the graphic design master programme of the Sandberg institute in Amsterdam. He is teaching at the communication department of the Design Academy in Eindhoven. In 2016 his publication Politics of design, a (not so) global manual for visual communication was published by BIS Publishers in the Netherlands. Currently he is working on a citizen journalism project in countries with censorship, and a series of educational puzzles about the NSA leaks for the Dutch newspaper NRC next.