Design 21: Social Design Network

"I was wandering through a narrow Madras alley on a very hot morning in January. The sun was beating and colors appeared especially vibrant within the bright light. The streets were crowded, Bollywood tunes blasting, and intense aromas of spices and sewage filled the air. Amid the chaos, it was beautiful."

Every so often, I’ll shoot a particular photo that ends up becoming a great source of inspiration. This inspiration can root from a variety of things, such as the color palette, the composition, the content, or even simply the memory of the moment.

In this article, I have presented a particular photo that inspires me, followed up with a few design exercises, and then showed how the particular theme is reflected around the world by presenting work from other photographers.

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What challenges will the next decade bring?

And how are we going to overcome them?

So asked the The Institute for the Future of thousands of participants via its progressive Superstruct online interface to co-create its Ten Year Forecast. Density Design was asked by Italy's Wired magazine to devise a visual synthesis of the forecast which could be used to stimulate onwards discussion by a wider audience.

Density Design is a research lab at the Politecnico di Miano which explores the emergent relationships between communication design, information visualisation and complex systems. It supports the use of communication design to facilitate dialogue within participatory decision making.

Creatively combined with an exquisite concoction of allegorical illustrations, the resulting Map of the Future provides a common visualisation on which to base discussions and analysis of what may lie ahead. The map has already been put to use at the Capitale Digitale collaborative sessions held by Wired & Telecom Italia. Hard to imagine going back to a paltry powerpoint pie-chart after being served up this flavorsome infographic feast.

Download a original (largest) version of the map on Flickr

In today's fast paced world of information overload, have we lost the ability to truly devote ourselves to the ultimate mastery of a single art? Read Article »

Photo by: Carlos Bohorquez Nassar

“We envision a select group of 60 designers, change leaders, NGOs, foundations and experts coming together to engage actively in opportunities to demonstrate design thinking in crafting solutions for large social problems, as well as to use existing networks and programs to accelerate change.”

The impressive list of attendees of the Aspen Design Summit next week will be collaborating to come up with design solutions and create concrete two-year implementation plans for 5-6 new projects. The themes include poverty, health care and education and collaborating organizations include UNICEF, the Mayo Clinic, and the Center for Disease Control. The Summit will include considerable dialogue and discussion of role of the design industry in leading social change initiatives.

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Learn about the value of pro-bono design and easy ways to get involved in a project.

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Re-nourish.com is the industry's most comprehensive free and independent resource for sustainable graphic design. Our goal is to move the industry forward, making sustainable design what design is, not merely what it "could be." We believe the best way to do this is to provide reliable, accessible tools to working designers everywhere.

Our team, consisting of three designers (two of whom also teach design at the university level) spent a year and a half developing Re-nourish as a way to bridge the gap between sustainable design theory and practice, and to help designers integrate better decision-making into their everyday design process.

We offer a free suite of tools and information that include:

• Heavily researched primers on everything from paper and print to packaging.
• Searchable paper and printer databases.
• Inspirational case studies.
• A project calculator that helps you reduce paper use/cost on projects (and save them to track over time).

Help Re-nourish Spread the Word

Re-nourish is constantly updated and expanded based on the input we get from stakeholders at every point on the supply chain. And we've gotten a lot of input - overwhelmingly positive, thankfully. In fact, Re-nourish is now up for a Cooper Hewitt People's Choice Design Award!

This is particularly exciting for us not so much for the win itself, but because if Re-nourish was to win this award - from such a venerable institution, and the People's Choice at that - we think it would send a really stron...

Pentagram partner Harry Pearce recently devised a project for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) which provided graphic training tools for the Russian police. Employing national abbreviations (GB, US, RU, etc) the folding posters presented comparative data surrounding drug abuse, intervention, therapy and health related consequences as a way of clarifying various aspects of drug policy during training sessions. (English versions shown here, with Russian versions being used on the ground.)

Read more on Random Specific.

Greengaged: Monday 21st September 2009:

Design for Life: Barriers to Behaviour Change; Curated by Ed Gillespie, founder of Futerra and slow travel expert.

Environmentally speaking, we’re in a bit of a mess, and we sort of know what we have to do: use less stuff whether it’s energy, materials or chemicals, cut carbon, relocalise and do things like trade in fairer ways. But we don’t. Ed Gillespie curates a day when we ask why is change happening so slowly, and what are the barriers, both behaviourally and in the context of design. This will be a day of challenges, questions and opportunities around the role of design in what we wear, what we eat, where we live and how we get around; food, fashion, homes and travel...provocative speakers, lively interactive debate and clothes-swapping: what more could you ask for?! The whole day will be hosted in partnership with the Talkaoke Wheel of Spiel, with live visualisation from The People Speak webjockeys (No singing. No punch-ups).

Breakfast Panel: 8.30 -10am Is it design’s job to save the world? A rousing debate to kick-off! Our panel of experts will offer their views on the potential for design in delivering change. Our diverse group are sure to bring a range of perspectives to the Talkaoke table and audience contributions will be actively encouraged.

Confirmed speakers:

• Roman Krznaric
• Professor John Wood (Goldsmiths University)
• Martin Hoenle (The Quiet Riot)
• Alastair Fuad-Luke (slow design)
• Sophie Thomas (thomas.matthe...

London Design Festival, 21st–25th September 2009

After an incredible launch year in 2008, the London Design Festival’s sustainability centre, greengaged, will be open again from 21-25 September with a full week of world-class events designed to help the design industry tackle the big issues around sustainable design. Hosted by the Design Council at their offices in Covent Garden, London, greengaged promises to inspire and challenge designers to create positive change.

Competition for greengaged places will be hot. Each day, 100 designers will take part in a series of debates, workshops, seminars, field trips and more – with each day taking a different theme. Everything is free of charge and can be booked at greengaged.com/events

Greengaged has been developed and organised by [re]design, thomas.matthews and the Sustainable Design Research Centre at Kingston University in association with the Design Council and supported by Saint Gobain.

New Zealand’s Student Job Search invested in an effective spot of crowdsourcing via a recent competition that captured the talents of tertiary students nationwide.

The competition was conceptualised with Tardis Design & Advertising & Ikon Communications and handed over the creative direction of the upcoming campaign (appealing to employers to list student jobs) to the students themselves. Prizes included $1000 cash and an Acer notebook for the winning entry plus the kudos of having the campaign put into circulation across the country.

Twelve finalists were chosen from an initial response to each spend a week working on creating their campaign – for which they were compensated by the not-for profit Student Job Search recruiting service. Sebastian Boyle’s “Employ a Student, Employ the Future” campaign emerged as the clear winner with its well crafted copy that offered dynamic possibilities in how it could be used to appeal to various categories of employers.

More surprising was the fact that Boyle is not studying Advertising or Design but rather is in his final year of Law. Helen Milner from Tardis Design noted that “one can see how both advertising and legal professionals require a strong sense of persuasiveness – a characteristic highly evident in Sebastian’s entry.” Her team were responsible for refining the concept and design ready for wider media dispatch.

Boyle expands – “I’ve always had an interest in design and advertising and this seemed l...