While images of pain and destruction dominated the media last week, many Americans are still filled with anger, demanding swift and symbolic consequences for those behind the murders of thousands.

Three Penn State senior graphic design students found a way to help unite the country by delivering a symbol of their own.

Mark Elias, Brian McCall, and Tom Klimek found their niche by designing an image of the New York skyline with the World Trade Center towers replaced by a hand making a peace sign.

They printed the image onto T-shirts and post cards and went to New York to hand them out to people on the street.

"People couldn't believe that we were giving them out for free," McCall said. "It's not about the money to us. We just want people to send them out to friends and relatives."

The trio, acting independent of the university, paid for all of the printing of the postcards themselves.

"We thought it was worthwhile," McCall said.

When local screen printer Patrick McCool, owner of P.A.M.P., Printing And More Printing, in Bellefonte, found out the students were going to give the T-shirts away for free, he decided to do the printing at no cost, as long as the students paid for the shirts.

"Anything that's non-profit and for a good cause — we try to do whatever is humanly possible to get involved," McCool said.

McCall, Klimek and Elias felt the same way.

"Our first reaction (to the tragedies) was shock," said Klimek. "Our second reaction was 'What can I do?' Some people gave blood, some gave money — and since we're not doctors or firemen, we're just graphic designers, we did this."

Elias said the men wanted to encourage people after the attacks.

"The best thing we could do was design an image that inspired hope," Elias said.

Coming up with the image the evening of the attacks, Sept. 11, they had all of the material printed on Sept. 13. The trio embarked for ground zero on Sunday afternoon and did not return to State College until Tuesday night.

"We felt that we might have missed it," McCall said. "But we didn't miss it at all — there was still smoke on the horizon."

They emphasized that their message was not to jump on the media's "New War" bandwagon.

"There are a lot of people out there who are war mongrels. Especially around here, people are completely removed (from the tragedies)," McCall said. "The crisis is bringing the people in New York together, which is good — but war is the wrong thing to rally around."

The trio is concerned about retaliation against minorities.

"There are some people who need to be brought to justice, but to punish a whole nation, a whole ethnic group, a whole religion, is just wrong," Elias said.

The grim reality of the situation in New York was apparent as soon as the students arrived in the city, they said.

"A lot of the stuff we saw in New York isn't the stuff you see on television. I think people are tired of seeing all of the devastation, and that's unfortunate because they aren't seeing all of the uplifting things people are doing in the city to reach out to each other," McCall said.

While in New York, the three students saw a handmade poster that said, "Thinking, Talking, Not bombing."

That was a nice summation of their ideas, they said.

While handing out their material in New York's Washington Square Park, the trio were approached by one of the city's radio stations.

"They just stuck a microphone in my face and asked who we were, what we were doing and who we hoped to reach with our message," McCall said.

A representative of the station also asked for permission to use the image for an advertising campaign starting Oct. 8.

The New York Times Magazine also may run the image, the students said.

"There are also a lot of Penn State alumni who are spreading our image in a beautiful gesture of selflessness because it's not their images," McCall said.

A Web site depicting the image will be up on Thursday at www.nine-eleven.org, along with an e-mail address to request the materials. T-shirts and postcards will be made available for the cost of shipping.