Responding to current economic, social and environmental crises, London’s NEF (New Economics Foundation) are this month running “The Bigger Picture”, a series of creative activities and events, exploring the possibilities of ‘a new kind of economy’, an economy which is low in carbon and high in well-being.
The event series culminates in a large-scale, public “Festival of Interdependence” in central London on 24 October 2009 when an interactive, living exhibition will be staged in the dramatic post-industrial setting of the Bargehouse on London’s South Bank. Read the rest of this entry »
On Sunday 28 June 2009 at London’s Conway Hall, Alice Rawsthorn (design critic of the International Herald Tribune, columnist for the New York Times and a leading authority on contemporary design) will host a ’sermon’ at The School of Life entitled “Alice Rawsthorn on Good Design”.
The Age of Stupid is a 90-minute film about climate change, set in the future, which will have its world premiere in London on March 15th 2009 and then be released in UK cinemas on March 20th 2009, followed by other countries. Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devasted world of 2055, looking back at archive footage from 2007 and asking: why didnt we stop climate change when we had the chance?
Having founded the company Adaptive Eyecare in 1996, British inventor Joshua Silver has embarked on an ambitious quest – to offer glasses to a billion of the world’s poorest people by 2020. Full news report at the Guardian.
Back in December 2008, I interviewed Lea Simpson, co-founder of Unchained, the online guide to independent shopping in London and New York. Behance Magazine have published the interview today, so do take a look to find out more!
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.
In preparation for The Real Work Experience workshops later this month, last Thursday nine graduate and undergraduate designers took part in an engaging afternoon of workshop training!
Arriving at the thinkpublic studio from Bristol, Brighton, Bournemouth, Glasgow, London, Kent and Leeds our leading designers are each running workshops on Friday 21st November to explore what young designers need to enable them to use their skills for social causes. Read the rest of this entry »
On Friday 21st November, final year and graduate designers will run simultaneous workshops up and down the country, in an exciting stage two of The Real Work Experience.
Exploring how designers can play a role in social improvement, we are asking young designers to consider what “The Real Work Experience” could do for them? Could it be an online network that bridges the gap between education and seeking (socially engaged) work? Could it be a mentoring program, or a regular series of events that discuss design’s wider potential? What do designers and graduates need, to be able to use their skills to tackle social issues? What does a movement toward socially responsible design look like to you? Read the rest of this entry »
Written by Kate Andrews for Greengaged, September 2008. Photography by Kate Andrews, copyright of Greengaged.
Did you know that recycling one tonne of paper can save 7000 gallons of water, 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space and 4000kw of energy!? On Friday afternoon at Greengaged, non profit enterprise Three Trees Don’t Make a Forest held a three hour sustainable print and paper workshop to explore how different print processes affect recyclability, and how you can reduce the impact through the design process. Read the rest of this entry »
On Friday evening, as part of the magnificent Greengaged hub of sustainability events (at London’s Design Council), a series of leading speakers will debate; “Should we believe the hype? Green Marketing, spin and substance.”
In 2007, 70% of the US’s GDP was generated from consumption. UK household waste has been growing by 2% – 3% per cent a year. The average shopper in the developed world shopper adds 3 tonnes of CO2 to their carbon footprint by simply buying stuff. Products and services are clicking on to the big sell of green. In the climate of economic down turn how can we create behaviour change in consumers who are bombarded by advertising and bored of green wash.
Chaired by Lucy Siegle from The Observer, the speakers include: Ed Gillespie (Futerra), Sophie Thomas (thomas.matthews), Stewart Rassier (Saatchi & Saatchi S), Richard George (Plane Stupid), Chris Sherwin (Forum for the Future), John Grant (author of The Green Marketing Manifesto).
To join the debate visit Greengaged.com and book your place! Kick off is at 6.30pm.
With the 2008 London Design Festival only a matter of days away, it is with great respect to read ‘Scenes of Graphic London’, an editorial piece written by Teal Triggs (Professor of Graphic Design, University of the Arts London). Highlighting the importance of Graphic Design to the UK capital, Triggs beautifully captures a timeline of the UK’s most iconic work, and intelligently pays respect to the changing faces of its future. You can download the full article from the London Design Festival website.
In June, San Francisco based designer Arvi Raquel-Santos spent 4 weeks in Hale County, Alabama with Project M, John Bielenberg’s famed summer programme set up to inspire designers to see that their work can have a positive and significant social impact.
Recognising the importance of ensuring talented designers have the opportunity to attend Project M (which costs $2000 each), Arvi has founded Design That Cares, “a socially based design collaborative”, which is selling posters pitching the Project M ethos “Think Wrong”.
For sale at only $35.00, the donations will go directly to help other designers attend the programme. Avri is also using a Facebook Cause Page to gain support.
Illustrating the power and potential of using design thinking to tackle some of the UK’s greatest social issues, Deborah and the team at Thinkpublic have helped make significant improvements to communications and patient experiences in the NHS.
“We are faced with a growing amount of social challenges, including an ageing population, social exclusion and global warming to name a few. Designers need to adapt their skills to play a role in helping solving these challenges. Not by designing posters or products, but by using their skills to involve people and communities in the problem solving process. Together we can understand how we can solve these big issues and design sustainable, useful and usable solutions that work in different households, communities, regions and counties.”* – Deborah Szebeko.
Alongside 5 other UK entrepreneurs Deborah has been shortlisted to the top six finalists. The winner will be announced at 100% Design, on 19th September 2008.
I have just rediscovered Collective Lens, an online network promoting social change through the use of photography. This is such a fantastic idea, that I hope more people get involved with. The website has a whole wealth of forums, articles and photo essays to explore. To get involved, you can upload a photo or a nonprofit organisation and help raise awareness to important social issues.
When scanning the RSS feeds, emails and articles there are few static visual elements able to stop me still. Last night however, in a focused search through Flickr for humanitarian related photography, I discovered the unique work of Polish born Maciej Dakowicz. For the third issue of the inspiring NEED Magazine, Dakowicz has visually captured a story about HOPE organization helping children in Kolkata, India.
Dakowicz currently lives in Cardiff, completing a PhD in computing and freelancing as a photographer. Do take a moment to explore his work at MaciejDakowicz.com.
Over the last month, I have been helping Simon Berry (CEO, ruralnet|uk) promote his latest idea, and what an idea it is! “ColaLife” is a campaign aiming to leverage Coca Cola’s distribution muscle to distribute life saving medicines to children in developing countries. The idea is so simple, but until now has been difficult to evolve. The power of web 2.0 and social networking media however, has allowed Simon to digitally document his progress and to build a digital support network to develop the campaign.
“We can distribute Coca Cola all around the World but we can’t seem to get medication to save a child from something as simple as diarrhea and I think that that is wrong.” (Annie Lennox)
Since the launch of the campaign and due to the power of a Facebook group, Simon was invited by Salvatore Gabola, Coca-Cola’s Global Head of Stakeholder Relations, to a meeting to discuss the idea further at Coca-Cola’s European HQ in Brussels. The campaign’s Facebook group has reached over 3,890 members since its inception on 18 May 2008. It was nominated for the NewStatesman’s New Media Award in June and showcased at London’s 2gether08 festival on 3 July. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this month, more than sixty buses hit the streets of Cleveland encouraging “Green Patriotism” with banners and posters designed by Pentagram (and Cleveland-born) designer Michael Bierut. Promoting the ecologically sound use of mass transit and buses, and the development of green jobs in the manufacturing sector, the posters are visible on buses across the city throughout July. “The banners are part of a new environmentalism — one that sees action to address climate change as an imperative to protect both the American and world economies.” Read the rest of this entry »
With introductory speeches from Design Council Chairman Sir Michael Bichard KCB and Live|Work Founding Director Chris Downs on Wednesday evening, the symposium running through Thursday and Friday will bring together leading academics, professionals and students to explore the practice of graphic design for the future.
Co-ordinated by Professor Teal Triggs (LCC) and Dr. Laurene Vaughan (RMIT), New Views 2 is structured with intent to allow open dialogue. Over the two-day symposium, six topical clusters – formed from the selected paper submissions, allow attendees to join discussions specific to their interest areas:
• Cluster 1: Design Writing/Criticism: Repositioning the Debate.
• Cluster 2: Graphic Design: Interdisciplinary.
• Cluster 3: Graphic Design: Practice and Methods.
• Cluster 4: Research/Innovation: New Critical Thinking.
• Cluster 5: Responsive Curricula: Shifting Paradigms.
• Cluster 6: Graphic Design: Changing the ‘Real World’.
The clustered group propositions are now available for download from www.newviews.co.uk
It is continually inspiring to discover new social design initiatives, increasingly springing up from a wealth of industry sectors, however this week I came across a project that (I feel) deserves huge creative and social credit. It’s name, The Global Oneness Project.
Founded and directed by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, The Global Oneness Project offers a remarkable insight in to the creative intelligence of human nature. This web-based video initiative aims to explore “how the notion of oneness can be lived in our increasingly complex world.”
The Global Oneness team are traveling the world, filming interviews with people from a variety of disciplines, asking them to share their stories about living and working from a perspective of interconnectedness. The films and interviews document an array of social initiatives from across the planet – in the fields of sustainability, conflict resolution, spirituality, art, economics, indigenous culture, and social justice.
There are already countless videos on the site, documenting some really insightful social projects, namely the “Not Just a Piece of Cloth” video about the Goonj recycling centre in New Delhi (the western world could really learn a lot from this one) and Johannesburg’s “GreenHouse Project”, run by Dorah Lebelo.
The library of films is available for free from the website or on DVD for event and educational use. This resource is an inspiring example of how design and social technologies can globally promote human creativity and social change.
It has been some time coming but it is here, a comprehensive exploration into what is ‘Social Design’. This great (if promotional) video comes from the team at the socialdesignsite.com.
During the first few months writing for sustainability design blog Inhabitat.com, it became immediately and increasingly evident how many designers were bathing in the new challenges of sustainability. The worlds of fashion, architecture, interior and product design continued to excel with an ecological conscience, launching countless contemporary designs every week. Although not focused to the work of Graphic Design, taking a quick look around Inhabitat it is evident a sense of contemporary Communication Design is appreciated. Critical dialogue however, discussing the relevant relationships between sustainability and graphic design, is almost vacant (with no more than 15-20 graphic-related features). This, it would seem is a recurring trend in the sustainable design communities.
“I wish I could report that it [graphic design] was doing its bit. Trouble is, tap “sustainable graphic design” into Google and you get a thousand suggested links. But, tap “Helvetica Movie” in, and guess what, you get fifteen thousand. So in cyberspace at least, that makes people 15 times as interested in a movie about a typeface than how to design responsibly. Great.” [Johnson Banks]
I am therefore, excited to have read this week that respectable designer, writer and critic Anna Gerber is currently writing a new book on Graphic Design and Sustainability, scheduled for publication by Laurence King in Spring 2009. I hope this book will give the Communication Designer a friendly kick in a sustainable direction and ultimately help our discipline play catch up to the rest of the creative industry.
Designer and author of the 2004 publication All Messed Up, Unpredictable-Graphics, Anna Gerber continues to write extensively for the likes of Creative Review, Print, Varoom, Idea and Eye. Furthermore, in collaboration with Teal Triggs, Gerber also wrote a dialogue for Blueprint last year, introducing the new postgraduate course, MA Design Writing Criticism at London College of Communications, which is scheduled to start this fall.
Last night I came across a magnificent online resource and initiative dedicated to socially conscious design, its name Creative For A Cause. Founded and set up by Denver based Graphic Designer Heidi Cies, Creative For A Cause (A Resource for Visual Communications Educators) aims to assist teaching social responsibility in design education.
“While social responsibility is being discussed more and more frequently within the Visual Communications industry and among educators today, no standards or guidelines currently exist to aid in the implementation of these concepts into the higher education curriculum. Where social responsibility is not already part of a Visual Communications program, and there is little or no administrative support for inclusion, it is left to individual instructors to decide how to best integrate this topic into their syllabi.
This site is a collaborative resource for educators of Visual Communications who wish to instruct their students on the importance of adopting a social and ethical approach to their work. If you know of additional resources that you feel would be of value, please contact us.” (Heidi Cies, Creative For A Cause).
Heidi, well done – this is a fantastic project that is certainly going to prove useful. I look forward to our future conversations.
In my search for socially-based designers, working with contemporary and intelligent design thinking, I have come across a number of inspiring U.S based designers/agencies/projects this evening.
The first I am going to mention has to be, Citizen Scholar, Inc, founded by designer Randy J. Hunt. This New York design consultancy specialise “in creative services for cultural institutions, educators, artists, non-profits and social entrepreneurs.” Although the website only profiles the work in a blog format, it is worth a look around.
When I was first asked to contribute a piece on design ethics to Design Sessions: Notes on Design, I wondered how I could credibly comment on such a complex and highly academic topic. Whilst sitting at the early stages of my creative career, I wondered how many of us really understand what it means to be a “good” designer, and asked myself, if and how, I am a “good” (socially-responsible) designer?
Design Ethics
Throughout every stage of my creative training, I have echoed the belief that design is “quintessentially an ethical process” (Devon and Poel 2002). I strongly believe that Communication Design has a positive and negative ability to affect social change, but recognize that its influential power should be treated with respect and careful consideration, of its use, from all its designers.
Forever an inspiration voice, John Thackara is a symposiarch who designs events, projects, and organizations. Director of Doors of Perception (Doors), and author of the awe-inspiring publication, In the Bubble, John has for the last two years lead the Design of the Times (dott 07) project in North East England.
“If you attend certain events, read certain books or policy papers it is possible at the minute, to formulate a world view whereby design is the panacea of all ills.” Wodcast.
Recorded at Intersections07, Wodcast recently caught up with John to discuss the dott 07 project, design and social change, sustainability, and design education. Thackara explains how designers should not see themselves as the cause of social problems, or pretend to have all the answers to solve them. The interview is short but definately worth listening to.
Following the success of last month’s initiative to fund 75 Hippo Rollers for South African community Kgautswane, Project H Design is at it again! Emily is currently in Uganda and informs me she has just launched the latest Project H initiative – Lifestraws for Mumbai! At only $25 each, Project H Design aims to donate 100 (or more!) Lifestraw Family systems to Mumbai, India.
Lifestraw Family is an amazing point-of-use water filtration device designed and manufactured by Vestergaard Frandsen that eliminates 99.999% of waterborne disease bacteria, parasites, and viruses, bringing clean drinking water quickly and reliably, and preventing life-threatening disease from spreading through unclean water.
Lots of support is needed again, to help with the success of this project, so why not help this initiative and sponser a Lifestraw! Its only $25 to sponsor one Lifestraw family system!
If you are able to please help me, by donating to my work, I can continue working for many social projects and young creatives, and help the real value of design evolve. You can donate fees via PayPal. Thank you.
