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social design

The Race to End Comic Sans

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | 2 Comments

In an increasingly digital age, there are some things that will always be written by hand. Postcards. The grocery list on the fridge. And, until homelessness is eliminated – panhandling signs. One foundation in Barcelona, Spain, had the idea to connect the handwritten signs of people experiencing homelessness to the technology used by business and publishers. The Arrels Foundation worked with graphic design team to take the handwriting of several individuals experiencing homelessness and turn their letters into fonts. Now, the fonts are available for purchase at homelessfonts.org.

The group hopes to see big brands use the fonts for their products, generating income for the foundation and the individual artists. Their website introduces the “writer” of the font and explains the terms of licensing the fonts. Contributor Loriane’s font is already in use, purchased by a company called Valonga and used as a wine label.
14394242435_9d1dd61a4d_hPhoto Credit: homelessfonts.org

This is an important innovation for several reasons. Not only is it an exciting opportunity for someone to see their handwriting transferred into print, but the marketability of a person’s writing allows companies to support homeless individuals in a mutually beneficial way. I believe there is a crucial need for aid and fair distribution of basic needs, but that is not what this is. This is not charity. This is allowing people experiencing homelessness to profit from their own product and for a business to make a purchase with a social impact.

The fonts can be licensed by an individual for around $26 USD, or commercially for just under $400 USD. This might cost more than Times New Roman or Arial, but graphics are increasingly important for marketing and branding. In April, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office spent £80,000 (roughly $136,000) on a type change that the Daily Mail called “almost identical.”
commonwealth-old.jpgcommonwealth-new.jpgImage Credit: Daily Mail

This is not to say that the Arrels Foundation and its clients are simply cashing in on lavish wasteful spending. In a time when pen-and ink writing has all but disappeared, type is both the face and the handwriting of a company. Design is important, and this concept allows individuals of many socioeconomic backgrounds to contribute to the way we’ll read and see the future.

 

A Trio of Powerhouse Design Conferences

By | Design, Social Media | No Comments

Fall is here and it’s time to get your learn on. As a lifelong learner and information sponge, I wish I could clone myself to take advantage of all the goodness out there. Opportunities flourish in the classroom and out, and sometimes a short conference is all you need to get inspired to put good ideas into action. Students especially have many opportunities to attend, often at a reduced rate. Here are three upcoming design conferences with an emphasis on social change and the value of design in business. Check them out.


A Better World By Design, September 28-30, Providence, RI
Cost: Students $45, Professionals $275, single day passes available

The Gist:

A Better World By Design takes place on the campuses of Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University. The goal is connecting multidiscipinary professionals and students to promote a socially-conscious global community.

The conference centers around the student Better World Challenge (submissions for this year are now closed). This year’s challenge is all about the digital divide and connecting the disconnected to the powersurge of information available through technology. The winner receives a $1,000 stipend towards implementation of the idea and is automatically placed into Dell Social Innovation Challenge’s semi-finalist round for a chance to win $50,000. Check out last year’s finalists and winners in this video.

Speakers include:

Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts
Cheryl Heller, American designer and brand strategist
Dr. Timothy Beatley, internationally recognized sustainable city researcher and author

Topics include:

Panels on Design Policy
Urban Farm Tours
Studio Workshops

Fun Factor:

Celebrating it’s fifth anniversary this year, ABWxD is hosting a birthday shindig on Friday night with a stationary bike race, photo booth, bike-powered DJ (whatever that is), and food trucks with local eats and drinks.

Design-O-Meter:

Looks to be a great student event with a focus on collaboration and social change. Intimate setting and refreshingly affordable.

Why It Matters:

ABWxD focuses on bringing together individuals from around the globe to collaborate on social design issues. Not to mention RISD is a hub in itself of design and innovative thinking, with president John Maeda at the helm. A completely student-organized event, ABWxD strives to create impact by thinking globally and acting locally. Connecting the student body to the professional one is paramount in strengthening design education, and this conference is a leader in building those socially-conscious design relationships.

GAIN, AIGA Design for Social Value Conference, October 9-10, San Francisco, CA
Cost: AIGA Student Member, $425, AIGA Professional Member $475-850

The Gist:

From the website:
To be relevant in today’s economy, businesses must think about more than just their bottom line. At “Gain” you‘ll hear design, business and social innovation leaders from a variety of industries share their visionary approaches to creating social value.

Presenters will demonstrate the broadening role design plays in institutional strategy, leadership, process and service, product and message, and how the creative attributes of designers provide special advantages to tackling socially relevant projects and enhancing the human experience. Build value for your brand and strengthen your business practice at “Gain.”

Watch presentations from the 2010 Gain conference here.

Speakers include:

William Drenttel, designer and publisher, Winterhouse
Patrice Martin, co-lead and creative director, IDEO.org
Justin Ahrens, principal, Rule29
Robert Fabricant, vice president of creative, frog design

Topics include:

Negotiating and Contracting for Pro Bono Jobs
Implementing Social Change
Successful Grantwriting and Fundraising

Fun Factor:

Roundtable discussions with specific industry experts, opening night reception, you’re in San Francisco!

Design-O-Meter:

The preeminent professional’s conference with the big name speakers to prove it. Top of the heap schmoozing but you’ll probably have to work (and pay) for it.

Why It Matters:

AIGA recently revamped their membership pricing structure to be more affordable, and is adapting to meet the needs of those in this rapidly changing profession. The crème de la crème speakers at this event make the case for the value of design throughout business and messaging, something that is essential in today’s marketplace. The emphasis is in exploring the role of the designer in the professional space, rather than under the safety umbrella of academia, which is of particular interest to me—integrating social value as part of a holistic approach, not pro-bono work designers are supposed to do on the side.

DesignThinkers Conference, Nov. 8-9, Toronto, Canada
Cost: Before Oct. 9, non-RGD members (Canada’s semi-version of AIGA) $525, student member $175, single day and deluxe tickets available

The Gist:

This is the 13th year for Canada’s largest design conference and is part of an event-full design week in Toronto. The theme is The Sacred Order of Alternative Ideas with the Latin motto finire cogitationes ad infinitum, meaning, limit your thinking to the limitless.

Watch this video for highlights from last year.

Speakers include:

David Butler, VP, Innovation, Coca-Cola Company
Lisa Strausfeld, Global Head of Data Visualization, Bloomberg
Stefan Sagmeister, Co-founder & Creative Director, Sagmeister & Walsh
Glenn John Arnowitz, Director of Global Creative Services, Pfizer

Topics include:

How to Market with Content Workshop
In-House Q&A with Julia Hoffmann & Glenn John Arnowitz

Fun Factor:

Studio tours, an opening party, “Teaching to See” film screening, a PechaKucha night, and a student portfolio workshop with Bryony Gomez-Palacio

Design-O-Meter:

Has been on my radar since I saw last year’s speaker lineup. Combines relevant topics with additional activities.

Why It Matters:

RGD is a professional graphic arts organization much like AIGA, however, they set design standards and designate those who qualify as Registered Graphic Designers (R.G.D.). Members must pass a standard examination of accreditation. How does this change the profession and value we put on design? Are designers more revered for having this accreditation and does it help raise overall awareness?

Mobile Design

By | Design, Social Media | No Comments

By now we’ve all seen bookmobiles, bloodmobiles, traveling HIV-testing clinics and mobile farmer’s markets as a way to bring goods and social services to the people (not to mention the ongoing food truck explosion). Now another four-wheeled venture has recently joined the traveling ranks. Introducing the mobile design studio!

Erik Olovsson, a recent design school grad, converted a mobile home into a roving design studio and is traveling across Sweden producing menus, business cards, posters and animation for local small businesses. He even takes it a step further by offering his services for barter or trade, eschewing cash for life’s necessities.

‘I want to explore my role as a designer and be my own producer, in the same time challenge the norms in the business,’ Olovsson commented in Frame magazine.

Wherever Erik’s Designbuss makes a stop, he rolls out the welcome mat and sets up chairs to have one-on-one contact with clients. What a great way to encourage idea exchange and provoke curiosity among passer-by.

“It is rare that a designer gets a deeper insight into the client’s business,” he adds in this article from Good. “It’s easy to be sitting in the office and surf design blogs instead of finding inspiration from reality.”

I admire Erik’s Design Buss immensely. The introduction of the digital age changed everything about how graphic designers work and forces us to be tethered to a computer for most of the day. When, ironically, the inspiration for creativity and the cause for social design is all around us. Some designers have reacted to this electronic epidemic by incorporating handmade elements and artist techniques into their work, hence the rise of the letterpress, screenprint and DIY craft.

I hope other graphic designers follow suit on Erik’s charming approach to the business of design. A mobile design studio might be a good transition for students of social design to get local and take their act on the road, while getting to see some of the communities they might be helping without the barrier of the screen.

Designing Data

By | Design, Social Media | No Comments

One of the most important roles of a designer is presenting information in a way that is clear and easily understood by the intended audience. When you think about it, this may be the single most crucial thing designers do. It’s at the core of communicating effectively. This coherent visual presentation of information can take many forms, from wayfinding signage in a children’s museum, to user experience design on a mobile website, to making prescription drug containers easier to read for elderly patients.

Data visualization and infographic design has become a developing trend across social design media. The sheer volume and diversity of infographic work on display at design community sites like Visualizing and Visual.ly alone tell me visual data representation isn’t a trend soon to be passé. As information overload increases and our attention span decreases, many think that this type of parsing information will be even more necessary in the future.

Infographics have long been a supporting aspect of journalism by presenting factual or esoteric information in an easy-to-understand format. What would USA Today or the Onion be without their (albeit, amusing) bar charts? With the astronomical surge of information made available to us via the web and new technologies, visualization graphics have become very popular, and much more illustrative. Wired magazine began utilizing this new style of visual data as part of their groundbreaking editorial design in the tech and web magazine market in the late 90s. Good magazine uses infographics so extensively, they have become synonomous with the magazine brand itself. This genre of graphic design has become prevalent enough that design firms have found their niche in solely creating them. Hyperakt, out of Brooklyn, NY, and Column Five Media in California, are two that consistently catch my eye. Posters of information graphics as art can be found on Etsy as well as designer’s personal web stores. Even your resume or LinkedIn profile can be transformed into a pie chart frenzy via Visualize.me.

Invasion of the Drones by Column Five Media for Good magazine.

Of course you can’t talk about all this data visualization without at least mentioning the godfather of it all—Edward Tufte. A statistician and professor emeritus at Yale University, Tufte has written numerous books and essays on information design. Tufte’s infamous criticism of Microsoft PowerPoint as a presentation tool for technical data might elicit chuckles from like-minded graphic designers, but some of his points shoot holes right through the fancy infographics those same designers might create. He argues that PowerPoint uses “chartjunk” to reduce critical data to trivial bullet points and graphs, and that this type of “slideware” favors format over content.

Presentations largely stand or fall on the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content. If your numbers are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won’t make them relevant.

Tufte goes further to suggest that PowerPoint has dumbed down our ways of assembling information, conducting statistical analysis and deductive reasoning. Not to mention degrading the quality of communication and trivializing the actual material.

So what about these elaborate, beautifully-designed graphics whose entire purpose is a visual representation of precious data? Are designers reducing important statistics to our own form of “chartjunk”—illustrated bullet points and color-coordinated Gantt charts? Granted, PowerPoint is primarily a presentation tool, and serves a different purpose than a well-thought-out editorial illustration. In a way, social-cause designers are making their own sales pitch, without the benefit of verbal explanation. In values-based design, these infographics are a large part of disseminating the need behind the call for action. Visual styling should be secondary to the content, or rather, enhance the organization of the message. Form should follow function, but that doesn’t mean black Helvetica on a white page is the best way to do it. As long as the designer considers the information and presents it in a clear way that tells a story or demonstrates a point of view, data visualization graphics will stay true to their purpose.

 

Washed Out

By | Design, Social Media | No Comments

Friday I went to see Beasts of the Southern Wild, an independent film about an isolated community in the bayou, and the imaginative six-year-old girl who believes it to be the “prettiest place on earth”. Oblivious to the extreme poverty surrounding her, her world begins to shift as she observes her father dying mysteriously and goes searching for her lost mother. The movie was difficult to watch at times—the filthy living conditions and inhospitable environs made me squirm in my seat more than once. There was no plumbing, no running water, no electricity and no one cleaning up after themselves. All of this trash and human waste contaminating one tiny island. As a sister to a microbiologist, I cringed.

Most of us take for granted the daily access we have to clean drinking water and methods of sanitation that have been established for us in this country. We are the lucky ones. (Thank you, Romans!) According to WASH United, “Globally, one in seven people lack access to even minimum supplies of safe water for basic personal and domestic needs. At any given time almost half of the people in developing countries are suffering from one or more of the main diseases caused by dirty water and poor sanitation, such as diarrhoea, guinea worm, trachoma and schistosomiasis.”  The lack of proper sanitation and plumbing has a far-reaching magnitude as well: “Almost 40% of the world population have no access to sanitation that ensures health, physical safety, privacy and dignity.”

We are resilient creatures, yes, but even the smallest of sanitation changes can make an impact on preventing disease and saving lives lost due to unclean drinking water and unhygienic conditions. WASH United is a coalition of organizations, agencies and sports players dedicated to improving sanitation and promote safe drinking water worldwide. Together with Quicksand, an innovation-led consultancy based in India, and a host of additional contributors and financial supporters, WASH United is launching a water- and sanitation-themed traveling carnival with rides, vendors, games and performances to spread the word about the importance of healthy sanitation measures. The Great WASH Yatra will make 8 stops from New Delhi to Mumbai over 45 days beginning on Mahatama Gandhi’s birthday on October 2, and closing with an end ceremony on November 19th, World Toilet Day.

Today marks the deadline for creative individuals, who wish to take part in this campaigning caravan, to submit a proposal and rough budget for any creative endeavor that would help promote WASH’s mission during the Yatra. Earlier this year, as part of the UnBox Festival, a kick-off for the Great WASH Yatra included a month-long collaboration with performance artists, designers, craftspeople and puppeteers to produce a puppet show that will be part of the traveling carnival. You can get a real sense of the energy behind the performance in this video:

[vimeo 36288496 w=500 h=281]

 

Had I known about this sooner, and had the stars aligned above my glowing laptop screen, I would have jumped at the chance to apply. I can’t wait to hear more about this in the fall and see whose projects are selected. There are eight fellowships available. What a fantastic opportunity to dive straight into the culture of rural India and have a chance to make a real difference not only in people’s daily lives, but also make an impact on worldwide public health.

The next time you wash your Prius or water the lawn, consider that there are people in this country who do not have access to safe drinking water or proper methods of sewage disposal. (Tip: Consider installing a rain barrel or using gray water for these purposes.) With recent cuts to federal funding for drinking and wastewater infrastructure, maybe it’s time to start a campaign here in our own backyard to help provide this basic need and human right to marginalized Americans.

Jami Dodson is a designer, writer, thinker with extensive experience in creative services. She thrives on delivering compelling communications solutions for mission-driven causes. Jami believes that open-minded, cross-disciplinary ways of problem solving are valuable, tangible things, and that they can build awareness and make lasting change in our society. When not designing or volunteering at greening events, you can find her at the farmer’s market or enjoying a manhattan.

Dear Blog: I Think I Love/Hate You

By | Design, Social Media | No Comments

It’s with trepidation that I enter the ubiquitous world of “blogging”. Although there’s really no need for quotes anymore—it was eight years ago that Merriam-Webster claimed ‘blog’ the word of the year. The word itself is a combination of two words with separate meanings—called a portmanteau by word-savvy linguists. According to Wikipedia, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence as of February 2011. That’s a lot of cat stories.

For a long time, I harbored a negative resentment toward blogs. I considered donning a t-shirt with “I Hate Bloggers” emblazoned across the front. Well, I didn’t have a problem with blogs per se, I had a problem with the people writing them. Those people who, and you know who you are, are blatenly using them to spew otherwise personal information into the interwebs. In ye olden days, this was called a diary. And it was kept personal. Why does the public at large need to know about your relationship with your therapist? I’ve always been put off by cheeky horn blowers. This new medium has potential to be an agent of transformation, beehives of collaboration, sounding boards for opinion, and yet some of the most popular blogs are unquestionably some of the most low-brow.

Alas, I shouldn’t take things so seriously. CakeWrecks makes me laugh every time. Maybe the reason I hated bloggers so much was because regular joes were given the opportunity (encouraged, even!) to publish openly without needing any technical skill or qualifications, much like how graphic design has changed since the introduction of the Mac. The proliferation of web blogging tools to the masses coincided with the popularity of Photoshop and high-end digital cameras. Now anyone with two hands and access to a computer can be a journalist, a designer, a photographer or an agent of social change. While in some regard this has diluted the validity and quality of these professional creative fields (as in crowdsourcing), it has also provided a mouthpiece for the individual with a means to make a difference.

I wanted more. I wanted to justify spending my precious time reading them. I expected bloggers to be legit, to be experts in their given subject matter. I didn’t want stay-at-home moms waxing nostalgic about scrapbooking. But even that stuff is relevant to somebody. Designers reaching beyond their given aesthetic boundaries and digging into the social relevance of their projects—now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s nerd-out about typefaces, but let’s also elevate design to be the strategic, valuable thing that is essential in today’s rapidly changing world. Isn’t it great to have alternative information sources? Shouldn’t I be celebrating the diversity of the written word and the right to individual thought and creative endeavors? It’s basically an evolution of the newspaper column. Or is it more?

In future posts, I hope to make the best of the responsibility I have as a blogger (and as a designer) and use this space as a platform for thought-provoking ideas and insight about design for social change. I admit it’s also an experiment in self-exploration and in seeking out the changes I’d like to see. Following the advice of Brian Collins, Chief Creative Officer of COLLINS:, an innovation-led firm, “Don’t think of yourself as a problem solver, think of yourself as a problem seeker. Look for challenges to overcome.”

As designers we have the ability to sell a product or shape societal views, sometimes even simultaneously. I’ll be touching on social design projects and collaborations, like MICA’s partnership with Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. I’ll take a look at group initiatives such as Project M and the upcoming Steamboat Design Camp (which I’m thrilled to attend in August) that bring like-minded designers together. Relevancy is all around us; it feeds different perspectives and ways of design thinking. Good design that is responsible, direct and connects on the human level will always rise to the top.

Now that’s something to blog about.

Jami Dodson is a designer, writer, thinker with extensive experience in creative services. She thrives on delivering compelling communications solutions for mission-driven causes. Jami believes that open-minded, cross-disciplinary ways of problem solving are valuable, tangible things, and that they can build awareness and make lasting change in our society. When not designing or volunteering at greening events, you can find her at the farmer’s market or enjoying a manhattan.