The Lab. A media arts company.

When tragedy strikes, the way a community responds can mean a major difference for those affected. Well, when the Berry family from Houston, Texas was faced with a horrifying accident in July, their community took action, to try to make a very hard situation better in any way they could. While driving home from an annual family road trip, the Berry family’s minivan was hit head on by another vehicle. Both parents Joshua and Robin were tragically killed. Their children suffered serious injuries. Peter age 9 and Aaron age 8 were left paralyzed from the waist down. Willa, age 6 suffered several broken bones.

thelab found out about this incident though one of our close colleagues, who is a member of Justin Bieber’s management team. The Show Your Hearts campaign was quickly initiated in an attempt to collect funds for these newly orphaned children in need. At thelab we were impressed by how quickly a community rallied together to try to help this family, and apparently we were not alone in feeling this way. Within days of the accident a slew of big name celebrities came together to support the campaign, the biggest being Justin Beiber, who has been asking people to donate through the site or by texting BERRY to 85944. He’s also asked people to swap out their social media profile photo for the fundraiser’s logo. Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and a host of entertainers and athletes have followed suit and are leveraging their weight in the twittersphere to ask for donations for the Berry family.

The large push worked, raising $30,000 in its first day alone, and Facebook page efforts have raised more than $200,000. Here at thelab we were happy to step and play our part by donating some design work to the cause. We created a one page print ad about the issue, which reads, “When Crisis Strikes, Love Strikes Back.”

Our goal was to give the campaign a voice with a poster and print execution that can be utilized cross across media platforms. We hope the print work helps to shed light on the situation with and end goal of raising funds for the Berry family’s ongoing needs.

You can Show Your Hearts to this cause by visiting http://www.showyourhearts.org or text BERRY to 85944.