Design 21: Social Design Network

With this slide, Saul Griffith, inventor, MacArthur Fellow, Ph.D., launches into his presentation at San Francisco’s recent AIGA event, Compostmodern. I saw a re-broadcast of Saul’s speech at AIGA Portland’s event of the same name, that also featured Brian Dougherty from Celery Design. Shortly after showing this provoking slide, Saul is quick to report that he hopes this is not true, he hopes that there is still a chance for design to change the world, and he devotes the remainder of his presentation to showing us how.

First, Saul presents the problem we all face: climate change. He shows how he evaluated his own lifestyle and figured out how much power he required in watts annually. He included not just the typical statistics, the power used in heating/cooling his home, the miles he drove, etc, but also he included all the objects he owned and factored in the power used to bring that product to life. These results were populated in a graph. The largest portion shown on the graph represented all objects that he owned that were designed, and this is the area he challenges the audience to rethink. He calculated the average watts used per person in North America at 11400 Watts, compared to the average European at 5400. Obviously this heavy power use has damaging side effects, as most of our current power sources expel carbon into the atmosphere at a rate of 8 billion tons of carbon every year. Which in turn, scientists now agree, is contributing to global warming and cli...

TODAY IS THE DAY DO-GOODERS! Fed-ex, UPS, USPS those entries OVERNIGHT! Hand-deliver to the AIGA SF office. Do what you must to get your cause/affect 09 entries in by TOMORROW!

FAQ

How do I enter online? causeaffect.aigasf.org/enter

Where do I mail the entries? Send all entries, with completed forms (or online payment confirmation) and payment to:

cause/affect competition category: (include entry category) attn: Don Savoie, AIGA SF 130 Sutter Street, Suite 600 San Francisco, CA 94104

Join us in welcoming some of the country’s top creative professionals and socially conscious business minds that have signed on to judge cause/affect09:

Valerie Casey - Practice Head, Digital Experiences / Networked Culture at IDEO and the founder and executive director of the Designers Accord, a global coalition of designers, educators, strategists, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.

Brian Dougherty - Principal creative director at Celery Design, a studio focused on creating communications that have a positive impact in the world, doing cutting-edge green design and brand strategy work across many media. Brian is the author of Green Graphic Design from Allworth Press and a frequent lecturer on the ecological innovation in communications design.

Yvette Irvin - Owner of SavvyClick Marketing, an Internet and marketing expert who has led programs for a variety of industries. Yvette is passionate about design and all things Internet and firmly believes in the power of words and design to facilitate good in our communities and our world.

Jean-Benoit Levy - International designer, author of several design books, including the "Handbook", and prolific educator at several Bay Area universities including Academy of Art University, California College for the Arts, and San Jose State University. He is also a member of the prestigious Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).

There's just 16 more days to enter - get cracking!

New this year: fill out your entry forms and pay online! Scared of new technology? Simply download the entry form and pop it in the mail. Enter now

Why enter?

Your work will be seen by a jury made up of some of the country’s top creative professionals and socially conscious business minds.

The truly worthy will pick up an award from the AIGA, the professional association for design, and their work will be showcased at our cause/affect awards ceremony on July 9 and displayed at the AIGA SF gallery through the summer. Winning entrants will also be featured on the cause/affect site.

Regrettably, the deadline cannot be extended. Slap on a stamp and get your do-gooder work in the mail today!

AIGA San Francisco has issued a call for entries for cause/affect, a graphic design competition that celebrates the work of socially-conscious designers. The deadline for entries is set for June 19, 2009.

The details of the competition are simple: all work entered must promote or support social good. To qualify, all AIGA SF asks is that it doesn’t contribute directly to the profit of a commercial organization and that the work must have been produced between November 1, 2007 and June 19, 2009.

Winning work will be showcased at the cause/affect awards ceremony July 9, 2009 and displayed at the AIGA SF gallery through the summer. Winning entrants will also be featured on the cause/affect site.

For entry forms, and more information, please visit: http://causeaffect.aigasf.org/

Starting today and continuing through the month of May, Design Reaction is going to send a free t-shirt to every designer who uploads an activist poster (or, posters!) to the Design Reaction poster gallery.

Your poster submissions may promote any social, political, or environmental cause, but must fulfill the Design Reaction file requirements and preparation guidelines to qualify for a shirt. After you upload, we’ll contact you to confirm a mailing address, or you can contact us first if you’d prefer.

If you’re a designer without a Design Reaction account, register today to upload your poster(s), and earn what will surely become the signature piece of your Summer 09 wardrobe.

Visit www.designreaction.org for more information.

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has partnered with Google Inc. for its “Doodle 4 Google” design competition. K-12 students from across the country are challenged to think like designers, using Google’s iconic logo to convey their hopes and dreams inspired by the theme, “What I wish for the world.”

On May 21, 2009 the winning student’s design will be the doodle of the day on the Google home page. The top four designs along with the 40 regional winners will be featured in a special exhibition at Cooper-Hewitt (May 21–July 5, 2009). The exhibition will focus on the problem-solving nature of the design process and will include educational programs for teachers and students.

Students’ designs will be judged on artistic merit, creativity, representation of the theme and other criteria. A panel of independent judges and representatives from Google and Cooper-Hewitt will select the top doodles across age groups, from which the public will help select the final four designs. The grand-prize winner will be announced at an event hosted at Cooper-Hewitt and the Google New York Office on May 20, 2009. The doodle will be displayed on the Google home page the following day. Courtesy of Google, the champion “doodler” will also receive a $15,000 college scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for the student’s school. This year’s competition also includes a $10,000 award to recognize the school district with the greatest-quality participation.

Teachers...

There is a lot we can learn from the success of internet based companies. One concept in particular, applies well to creating a strong brand, the Long Tail. The Long Tail is a phrase coined by Chris Anderson in October 2004 in Wired magazine (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html). It is created by a market of unique products. These products do not appeal to masses but instead to distinct tastes. What makes them distinct also makes them different. Differentiation is pivotal to creating successful brands. By creating companies and products in the Long Tail you have already solved one of the challenges of creating a strong brand. Here is some background information on the Long Tail from wikipedia:

“The concept of a frequency distribution with a long tail — the concept at the root of Anderson’s coinage — has been studied by statisticians since at least 1946.[2] The distribution and inventory costs of these businesses allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The group that purchases a large number of “non-hit” items is the demographic called the Long Tail.” To read more go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheLongTail

As individuals in society we are looking to find networks where people have the similar tastes, values and shared experiences. We want to to be a part of a community united by common thoughts w...

We all know how much green washing has infiltrated our lives. You see it everywhere. Businesses are using marketing and branding techniques to capture the "green" audience and make a profit. All in the name of the environment and sustainability. In the end these businesses will only hurt themselves for the quick buck. What these businesses fail to understand is that the socially conscious consumer might purchase their product or services once based on trust. If the consumer's trust is not reinforced they will not only lose that customer, but that customer will also tell all their peers and friends.

A great example of this is a deli and coffee shop in Downtown Seattle. In the last year they recently re-branded their look (which worked perfectly well to the begin with) to appear green. They changed their colors from yellow, red and black to shades of green and incorporated a leaf into their logo. I had never eaten there, but had noticed these changes from the outside. They are well known for their roast beef french-dip style sandwich. I had some extra time one day between appointments and decided to get a drink and a snack. They had a nice space and I enjoyed a comfy few minutes before moving on to my next appointment. As I left, I looked for a recycling bin to leave my glass bottle. I could not find any form of recycling anywhere. I took the bottle with me to recycle elsewhere.

How could an establishment that claims to be "green" not offer recycling? I have not researched th...

“Don’t fight forces, use them” is a Buckminster Fuller quote that is especially relevant for designers in these times of converging economic and environmental pressures. I was reminded of this idea at Practivism - a talk on sustainability and communication design - when Brian Dougherty said, “We can all invent this - be the expert.”

Dougherty was referring to the blossoming area of graphic design practice that weaves sustainability thinking into the outcome. It’s a niche ripe for becoming mainstream through the experiments of a set of brave visual innovators.

Practivism is the hybrid word for practice and activism drummed up by the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada (GDC) BC team to describe this particular form of practical problem solving. The Practivism event in Vancouver this November was an evening of talks by Dougherty along with Eric Karjaluoto and Marc Alt. Marian Bantjes captured the synergy of the night in a heart-racing promotional poster.

Eric Karjaluoto kept the audience giggling through his comedic slideshow which included an advertisement he found depicting an SUV driving into the sunset titled: “Because you Hate Mother Nature.” He introduced a new word he found on a blog: Depletist – a description of an individual with environmentally inappropriate behaviour. Karjaluoto is the author of the web site Design can Change which aims to bring the design community together to design positive outcomes. A self-described “mini-van driving, fast...