It’s not surprising that Jem Robinson's regular illustration for this week's Independent in the UK was on the topic of Haiti. After sketching through several ideas, the AD settled on and image of a hand reaching up and out for help. The hand shows roughly healed scars and badly stitched up wounds and one large open gash that is bleeding.

It is intended as a visual representation of Haiti's problems, the old scars being the legacy of French occupation, which still looms large over the country today, and the badly stitched wounds representing the democracy that replaced dictatorship and hasn't really solved the problems.

Of course the open, bleeding gash is a symbol of the earthquake, currently an open wound and occurring within the same physical boundaries of the previous issues. As an extra touch Jem tried to make the hand roughly resemble the shape of the country, at least in terms of the thumb's position, and have the cut be vaguely in the area of Port-Au-Prince.

“I'm sure many casual readers will just assume the hand is meant to show someone reaching out for help, someone trapped in the rubble, which it kind of does; I always intend for my images to work immediately.”