Austrian men’s magazine Vangardist has printed an edition using ink infused with the blood of HIV-constructive folks to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS.

Created to coincide with the Existence Ball, a single of the world’s largest AIDS charity events hosted yearly in Vangardist’s hometown of Vienna, the magazine has printed three,000 unique copies of its spring edition.

Vangardist teamed up with Saatchi &amp Saatchi Switzerland to uncover a way to use the magazine to set off debate and increase awareness of the disease.

The ink in the particular edition is infused with blood donated by three HIV good men and women – a gay guy, a heterosexual guy and a mother.

“We discovered donors through the Vangardist site and also through personal connections,” said Jason Romeyko, international chief inventive director at Saatchi &amp Saatchi. “We wanted to get the picture of HIV individuals beyond the gay stereotype. Hence the combination of a gay man, a heterosexual guy and a mom include a deeper dimension to this.”

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The edition is devoted to celebrating “HIV Heroes” – people who live with or talk about the illness publicly, and support other folks who are HIV+ – and features a text only cover in contrast to the magazine’s usual cover image of a model.

For its the standard edition of the HIV Heroes situation, which was printed with regular ink in a run of 15,000, the German-language magazine utilised a photograph of a model swathed in red fabric. This picture was used as a background colour to develop the letters HIV+ on the white cover of the blood-printed edition.

“Becoming a life-style magazine, it was a challenge to express the seriosity of our result in and to hold the life style and handwriting of our brand,” explained the magazine’s editor Julian Wiehl. “We determined for a text only cover and filed the most essential letters HIV+ with the picture of the cover from the regular edition as a reference.”

The Vangardist staff used the Donau Forum Druck printing house, which developed their 1st magazine in 2013, to print the HIV Heroes particular edition.

“This was the easiest element of the project,” stated Wiehl. “But it really is fascinating to know that we reached out for aditonal printers and no-a single was inclined to do the undertaking.”

The blood taken from the 3 donors was mixed together at the printers, and loaded into a device Wiehl described as an “infusion portioniser”. This permitted the fluid to be injected into the ink just just before it was printed.

“By injecting the blood from HIV good individuals into the printing presses, we transformed the media into the root of the stigma itself,” explained Romeyko. “Every word, line, picture and webpage is printed with the mixture of blood and ink.

It was created using a regular offset printer and recycled and CO2 neutral paper stock, with two thirds of the magazine printed with a standard finish and 1 third with a glossy finish.

The magazine followed suggestions developed by Harvard and Innsbruck University to make sure that physically managing a last copy of the magazine poses no chance of infection.

It is packaged in a plastic wrapper for legal causes, but this also serves to as an additional dimension to the project, inviting readers to overcome their own prejudice when opening the sealed wrapper.

Blood and ink mixing

“The legal restrictions recommended us to not just distribute the magazine without having a warning,” explained Romeyko. “There is absolutely nothing like a ‘restriction’ to heighten creativity. Therefore the re-sealable wrapper which truly tends to make the communication so extremely significantly stronger.”

“By incorporating a transparent re-sealable wrapper we extra an additional moral dilemma,” he extra. “Do you stay away from the problem due to the fact of ignorance or dread? Or do you break the seal and physically take the situation (the trigger and magazine) into your hands. That way you break the stigma and are portion of a remedy.”

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