After being diagnosed with a life threatening disease, Washington based artist and illustrator Eric Smith set up We Live Now, a project consisting of a growing collection of quotes, thoughts, stories, lyrics, creations and other various mediums that pursue the idea of living now and inspiring each of us to grow, live meaningful lives and be happy! “Our lives are only in the moments right in front of us.”
On April 30th, in the heart of London, four students from London’s Ravensbourne College of Design will present Blank Canvas, a silent auction of customised design work by the likes of Milton Glaser, Ken Garland, Non-Format, Jonathan Barnbrook, Si Scott, Julien Vallee, James Goggin, Graphic Thought Facility and many more!
Blank Canvas is an event organised by the students on the BA (hons) Design for Moving Image and Graphic Design course to raise funds for their graduation show. They will be sending a list of top designers and illustrators random items, found in various jumble sales and charity shops across London (anything from an old teapot, to a rusty cog, to a vintage suitcase). They will then be asked to customise these items to then be collected and put to auction on April 30th at the Vibe Bar on London’s Brick Lane.
Brilliant idea guys, I’m looking forward to seeing some old stuff made new!
As many of you will know, for over a year now, I have spent a great deal of time mentoring graduate designers and creatives, offering them advice, connections and often helping them to gain working placements. Today, one 2008 graduate forwarded me news of a new social enterprise that’s been launched in North London. Consurgo is an initiative that gives exciting opportunities to design students and graduates through a range of pioneering schemes such as portfolio reviews and remote placements. Brilliant, schemes like this are vital.
Whilst learning about David Berman and his new book ‘Do Good Design‘ I came across this speech, which he gave at the 2006 Icograda Design Week in Hong Kong.
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.”
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!?
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 »
The latest video from the UK Design Council has wonderfully captured the essence of design. Ambitiously entitled ‘What is Design?’ the video illustrates the simplicity required to explain the nature (and power) of design to the masses.
On Wednesday 8th October, I arrived at London College of Communication for the first day of my Masters degree. Led by Professor Teal Triggs, Anna Gerber and Dr Ian Horton, the brand new MA in Design Writing Criticism has set out to uncover the new roles for professional design writing and criticism.
Following a morning coffee, I sat down alongside my fellow post-graduate colleagues. Following hand in of our preliminary task, to write 250 words in response to the question ‘Why Do I Write?’ our attention turned to our second exercise; to choose and bring in one artifact (object, visual or textual) that we considered to be part of a/the ‘Design Canon’. 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 »
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 conjunction with NYTimes.com, the AIGA’s Ric Grefé and Jessica Friedman Hewitt have developed an interactive demonstration of how good ballot design can improve the voting experience.
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.
When it comes to positive psychology, emotional intelligence and well-being initiatives, the standard of contemporary design and communication is often quite poor. However, with a confident and ‘funky’ identity, thanks to the design team at MultiAdaptor, InnerRevolution.com has set a new visual standard.
Designing tools and experiences that facilitate positive learning, creativity, motivation and inspiration, InnerRevolution.com is a project hosted by Elemental WorldWide, a socially focused company that gives 24% of its profits to charity.
Missouri based designer and illustrator Frank Chimero has produced a great collection of ‘inspirational design posters’. I have returned to these workds countless times over the past week, consistently thinking how suitable they would be to support social projects. The posters are now available to buy online. It would be good to know if the profits are going to a social cause?
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
Over the past week, I had the pleasure of meeting and working alongside the multi-talented Graphic Designer Alex Ostrowski. Alex, a 2008 UK Graphic Design graduate from Bristol’s University of West England, recently won the RSA and NESTA’s competition ‘Engage!’.
Tagged to “catalyse social change through design-led citizen participation”, the Engage! project, aimed to encourage social responsibility in young designers. The 2008 RSA Design Directions brief asked student designers to consider how they could best use design to bring about positive change within a community and instigate a project solution of this nature.
To launch the much anticipated MA in Design Writing/Criticism at London College of Communication, Stephen Bayley (design critic for The Observer) presents the first of a series of new talks this month, surrounding the current state of design writing and criticism.
Today, I came across “The Girl Effect” movement – described to be when powerful social and economic change is brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society.
“When adolescent girls in the developing world have a chance, they can be the most powerful force of change for themselves, their families, communities and nations. But while those 600 million girls are the most likely agents of change, they are invisible to their societies and the world.”
The campaign logo, promotional video and supporting posters are equally an inspiring example of when contemporary Graphic Design and Typography is used for Social Change. There is something really unique and approachable about the sketched ‘G’ letters laid out onto one of the posters (detail pictured above).
CoolHunting reported last week that Norfolk-based design studio Grow Interactive, teamed up with leading independent advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy for the campaign design.
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.
The 2008 National Design Awards, by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum have announced this years winners. I am not overly surprised to see that Michael Bierut (DesignObserver / Pentagram) has been awarded the Design MInd Award (a well-earned achievement all the same), but it’s great to see that Scott Stowell (of the cleverly branded studio Open) has been awarded the Communications Design Award. Congratulations chaps, I look forward to seeing some females in the shortlist next year though.
Graphic designers work with clients, institutions, users, and communities to make things happen in the world. Yet education often focuses on the individual voice. How are we preparing students for a lifetime of working with and for other people? How are our students connecting to the world? Come participate in a relaxed and stimulating weekend of lively discussions, hands-on workshops, and informal activities.
With the intention to host “dozens of presentations and workshops led by designers, educators, and graduate students”, this looks to be a thoroughly engaging event that is currently calling for speakers!
Whilst admiring the work and words of C&G Partners graphic designer Scott Ballum (aka. Sheepless) this evening, I soon found myself exploring the online pages of GDUSA’s January issue, “People to Watch in 2008″, where Ballum was featured. The 2008 annual feature of “newsworthy designers”, asked each designer about the future of their profession, the health of the economy and the state of planet Earth. The responses are certainly worth a browse.
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.
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.
