Design 21: Social Design Network

Reminded today of this beautiful work by Paula Scher and Lenny Naar [Pentagram]. Entitled Free Love in the Park this poster was designed for the 2007 New York Shakespeare Festival.

During 2002-2004, The UK Design Council initiative Designers into Schools, placed professional designers in secondary school Design & Technology classes across the UK. The initiative successfully matched 327 designers from across the range of creative disciplines with English secondary schools.

Although, the Design Council has now suspended the administration of the initiative, (having fulfilled its initial brief to run for three successive years), the DiSW website and information is certainly inspiring.

Linking the creative industry with education should, in my opinion, practice more initiatives like this. Nevertheless, this is yet another inspiring project from the UK Design Council!

I read and research everything I can and will continue to do so, but I question whether this will be enough to survive against a rising force.

Deep down I know that the core principals I learn will provide sustenance and sustainability, but for every one of them that fails, a hundred will replace them. Will they overwhelm us? And if so, how will design, and our roles, be affected when everyone becomes a ‘designer’?

Reference:

• Le, L. 2006. The New Battlefield. AIGA.

On vacant urban walls, white posters await advertisements. The guys at Wooster Collective recently spotted this conceptual design, which cleverly co-opts the space by sticking on it, a "broken link" icon.

NewsMap is a fantastic application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. Intelligently highlighting the headline stories, this is a must see for typographers and designers alike.

Design Professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Kerry Polite (2004) published his thoughts on what are today’s [2004] ‘most important questions in design education’. He offers a personal observation to the nature of contemporary design education, in comparison to its historical origins:

In the past, students and educators dealt mainly with four or five principles: composition, typography, form, colour and drawing… Today, students are expected to be skilled technicians, be knowledgeable in a range of software programs and work with sound, motion, and interactivity.

Polite explains how design students need to slow down and think, to be working for content-driven, not style-driven design solutions. The problem, he pitches is how today, Students want to rush in and make finished projects… and …because they have been bombarded with very slick visual stimuli their entire lives, the work tends to look derivative.

This observational discussion offers an interesting [if, concerning] perspective on how important it remains to embed and praise design thinking, research, experimentation and relevance. Thinking About Design Education was published by the AIGA in 2004.

"Mathematical perfection,.. ignores the fact that the visual world relies on imagination and illusion.

The graphic designer needs a foot in both worlds and must reconcile these polar opposites... In a world where information about virtually everything is available instantly, it is rewarding to discover things that exist but remain hidden, invisible, unless perceived through observation.

As we move forward, it is important to preserve the valuable human component to the process of making and visual thinking. While technology expands its influence on traditional means of thought and design, the role of the graphic designer will continue to evolve in new and unpredictable directions.

• Reference: William Longhauser (2005). Beyond Small Medium and Large.
• Image: DumpTrumpet, Via. Good Magazine.

From an essay by Lorraine Wild, That Was Then, and This Is Now: But What Is Next? from: Looking Closer Four: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, comes an interesting discussing from Assistant Professor in Graphic Design, Todd Roeth.

Designers need a lot of common sense. In short, effective graphic designers need to be able to be sensible and conscious of different viewpoints, and different styles of language (verbal and non-verbal) within their culture and the types of mindsets that speak them. Furthermore, graphic designers then need to draw from their body of knowledge and experience, and employ it to cleverly, shrewdly, and creatively solve the problems graphic designers are challenged to confront. And that common sense is free to all who have the passion – or at least, the wherewithal – to seek it, but priceless when obtained.

Image spotted by SwissMiss FFFound, via Michael Surtees at Design Notes.

Seemingly a really positive initative, from a list of iconic design leaders and organisations, The Designers Accord is a coalition of design and innovation firms focused on working together to create positive environmental and social impact (2008).

Partnered with the AIGA and IDSA, The Designers Accord was founded by Valerie Casey and hosts an advisory panel including: Paul Hawken - Natural Capital Institute, Tim Brown - IDEO, Allan Chochinov - Core77, Jen van der Meer - o2NYC and Marc Alt - Marc Alt + Partners.

The movement they explain 'started as a call to arms for designers to engage in the environmental movement with optimism and creativity ...It is our obligation to use our knowledge, experience, and reach to positively influence what we design and consume.'

Great news from Creative Review this month. A 3sprong creative collaboration have founded Three Trees Don't Make a Forest, a not for profit enterprise set up to help everyone involved in design and advertising to rethink their working cultures and start to produce sustainable creative solutions that really work.

Vastly experienced, Three Trees’ founders, Sophie Thomas of thomas.matthews, Caroline Clark of Lovely as a Tree and Nat Hunter of Airside will continue to run their respective award-winning design practices while working within the industry to share their collective 25 years’ experience in creating effective sustainable design.

When it comes to sustainable design, there are no excuses. Sooner or later our industry will have to rise to the challenge. As creativity is our business, we should be comfortable with the notion of making our design work that bit harder; creatively and for the environment.

• Three Trees Don't Make a Forest
• CR Blog