I have to start with a disclaimer: I only saw these posters because a client at PricewaterhouseCoopers sent them to me as background material for a job. At the time, in addition to client work, I was trying to find something challenging to write about for this column. These haunting, well-chosen, black-and-white photographs with big fractions really grabbed me. Plus, they’re completely unlike the usual clumsy, rah-rah, flack-soaked employee poster. Knowing that the back story had depth, I decided they were worth covering. I admit that my client is thrilled, and this probably won’t hurt my relationship with them. Now let’s get into it.

All designers know that a poster’s primary job is to stop you, draw you in, and get you to read the message. Its secondary job is to be cool enough or beautiful enough to make you want to steal it. These posters do both. The gritty, unpopulated photography sets up a “missing hero” narrative that makes you want to find out what happened. The big fraction—in green, the color of life and hope—contrasts nicely with the image and sets the theme. If you were a PricewaterhouseCoopers employee, you would know what it was about, because the posters were part of a countrywide internal campaign that included a full range of media—e-mail blasts, newsletter announcements, and so on—to promote a community service initiative.

It’s a Corporate Social Responsibility thing. I use initial caps because CSR is big in Corporate America these days. Increasingly, customers, employees, and even Wall Street have come to see social responsibility as a deciding factor. Given a choice, people would rather buy from, work for, and invest in companies that have a good track record for community service and fair management practices. We’ve all seen plenty of PR on this, and snickered. “XYZ Inc. donates technology to the Sad Children’s Home.” So what? They’re just doing it to look good, and besides, that’s just a drop in the bucket.

My reaction until recently was much the same. But this program is pretty far-reaching, and it’s not the only formal coordinated CSR initiative I’ve seen lately. Something is definitely afoot in Corporate America. Yes, these companies know that CSR makes them look good, and that’s why they’re doing it. But all change has to start somewhere. The fact that CSR has a bottomline value indicates that attitudes toward profit and loss are shifting. Even where management is using community service with an element of cynicism, the employees who enlist are almost certainly sincere. They know that working for a wealthy, powerful company puts them in a position of relative privilege. And they may well want to pay it back in some way. It’s like the old concept of noblesse oblige: If you are lucky enough to be a noble, you are obliged to use your status to help others.

To return to this poster series, 29k refers to PWC’s 29,000 U.S. employees. The 30 refers to the number of days in the month of June. Paired, the numbers mean that the company is asking every employee in every stateside office to sign up. Each location has to execute the service project they’ve chosen within the month, on company time. Since each city has chosen a different project, they each get their own poster. What impact will they have? They’ll build houses, restore streams, clean up campuses, beautify parks, host youth activities, plant trees.

Getting back to design, imagine any one of these posters hung in multiples—a wall of them, or a long row of them. The simple forms in the photographs and the relentless 29k/30 type would be awfully impressive. Imagine other “let’s do good” posters you’ve seen. These are unusually sophisticated. No pictures of big-eyed children, no happy-happy images of nice businesspeople planting flowers with terribly appreciative inner-city folk. No messaging about how terrible this situation is, or how good you’ll feel if you join. No big “sponsored by” message or appeal to the corporate team—just the facts, trusting the staff to understand and make up their own minds. The house is ruined—we’ll build a new one. The stream is trashed—we’ll clean it. The firehouse is dangerously old—we’ll update it. The absence of sentimentality, manipulation, and self-congratulation is refreshing.

Granted, these volunteer projects are appealing, one-time events that are easy to commit to. But what matters here is they may signal a real social change. Not because I think it would be sweet if we all helped each other out more, but because market forces are driving the CSR trend. More and more companies are feeling the need to create such programs and promote them aggressively. Employees are signing up. To hold onto that strategically valuable Good Citizen position, the companies will have to do it again. To distinguish themselves from all the other companies that are working the CSR lode, they’ll have to up the ante. CSR is becoming part of the cost of doing business—a given.

I chose these posters for this column because a) they let me talk about this trend, and b) they’re lovely. If I was a PWC volunteer, you can bet I’d steal one. Wouldn’t you? Let’s hope that internal campaigns with fine design and respectful messaging are becoming a given, too.

It’s always a challenge to find subjects with interesting back stories for this column. If you have story suggestions, please contact nancy@mizbernard.com.

POSTER DESIGNER: Mattthew Wakeman, PricewaterhouseCoopers, ART DIRECTOR: Kelly Conley, PricewaterhouseCooperst