The Service and Social Design Future

Discussing the emerging need (and trend) for social and service design, Alice Rawsthorn has this week published Creative Solutions in Tough Times, a prominent feature for the International Herald Tribune.

“Another question is whether designers are ready to respond to these challenges, as “service” and “social” design involve very different skills to conventional design practice. The 20th-century notion of the lone “designer-hero” (there were depressingly few “heroines”) shaping his projects from start to finish was always illusory, but the new approaches to design require far greater collaboration, not just with fellow designers but with experts from other disciplines like economists, social scientists, anthropologists and programmers too. Designers also have to make the leap from a material culture where their work generally had a definitive outcome, such as an object or image, to one in which they are applying design thinking to analyze problems and develop solutions that are neither visible nor tangible.

Filed under: On Social Design, Alice Rawsthorn, Creative solutions in Tough Times, Humanitarian, Service Design, Social Design

Tie Me To Your Favourite Thing

If you had to tie a red balloon to your favourite thing, what would you tie it to?

As part of her undergraduate project Douceurs, post graduate service designer Lauren Currie, (a.k.a Red Jotter), took a dozen red balloons to a park in Edinburgh, and to encourage traditional communication between the public asked people she met to tie them to their favourite thing.

Filed under: Art & Design, On Community, On Culture, On People, On Social Design, On Society, Balloons, Community, Design, Douceurs, Lauren Currie, RedJotter, Research

Affluenza Exhibition

In collaboration with the Samaritans, talented photographer Hege Sæbjørnsen is organising ‘Affluenza’… THE exhibition. With an aim to promote “creative self-expression as a powerful tool to develop an understanding of ourselves and the world around us”, an exhibition of works from over thirty international multidisciplinary visual and performing artists, “…aims to inspire an open debate about the destructive impact of consumer values on our emotional well-being and our integrity as human beings.”

The call for artists has been launched, and entries will be selected by a prominent panel of judges, including Jonathan Barnbrook, ‘Affluenza’ author Oliver James and the Design Museum’s Michael Czerwinski.

The deadline for submissions is 30th January 2009 and the events are scheduled to begin in March. For full details about the project visit AffluenzaExhibition.org, and you can also join the exhibition’s group on Facebook.

Filed under: Art & Design, On Events, Affluenza, Hege Sæbjørnsen, Oliver James, Samaritans

Service Design Project nominated for Design of the Year Award

Last Tuesday the UK Design Museum announced the nominations for the 2009 Brit Insurance Design of the Year award, including a nomination for the first EVER service design project to be included in the awards – The Social Innovation Lab for Kent (SILK), by Engine.

SILK is a project and a platform Engine have been developing with Kent County Council (a local government authority in the UK) that helps users and providers of public services create better services together using design tools and processes.

Read the full story at Engine and see a video here.

Filed under: On Community, On Culture, On Ethics, On Social Design, On Society, 2008, Award, Brit Insurance, Design Museum, Design of the Year, Engine, Service Design, SILK, UK

UK Environmental Book Design of 2008

Last weekend The Green Marketing Manifesto by John Grant was announced winner of the Environmental Award at the 2008 British Book Design and Production Awards. Designed and delivered by sustainable innovation practice More Associates, the hardback book reflects its content by reducing its embodied carbon and waste impact through its production methods.

John Grant is author of four books on new marketing and was a former co-founder of St Luke’s, a socially aware ad agency. He now operates as an independent consultant and recent clients include the BBC, Cisco, IKEA, innocent drinks, Microsoft and Unilever. In a blog entry, John notably highlights that books remain a relatively carbon inefficient way of spreading knowledge. However, as Luke Nicholson of More Associates explains “…it’s important to remember the impact of the lifespan of the text. If writers like John can create books that will be kept for decades by their readers, then the paper is used hundreds of times more efficiently than most of our print material.”

Congratulations go to John Grant, More Associates, to TJ International who produced the book, and to publishers Wiley.

Filed under: On Graphic Design, On Sustainability, Graphic Design, John Grant, Luke Nicholson, More Associates, sustainability, The Green Marketing Manifesto

Represent presents “Future Present”

With Christmas just around the corner, it is time not only to think about your presents but also how you wrap them! In the UK alone, we use more than 8,000 tones of wrapping paper every year for our Christmas presents!! In a bid to challenge this problem, London based agency Represent have challenged the design community to develop innovative and eco-friendly solutions to the problem, by designing sustainable and totally tape-free ways to wrap a Christmas gift. Introducing Future Present!

Twenty best ideas have been selected and are appearing daily on the Represent website and in the studio’s ‘advent’ window throughout the month!. This is a great concept and an important consideration this christmas. So, what will you use to wrap your gifts!?

Filed under: On Culture, On Graphic Design, On Sustainability, Christmas, Eco-friendly, Future Present, Giftwrap, london, Mike Radcliffe, Paper, Represent, sustainability, Sustainable, UK, Wrapping Paper

Education, Education, Education

A story worth learning, from the magnificent Richard Gerver.

Filed under: On Education, On People, Creative Intelligence, Creativity, Education, Intelligence, Richard Gerver, Sir Ken Robinson, Talent, The Element