Design 21: Social Design Network

I managed to attend the overpriced 'Applied Green' event Oct.3 (£650!!) at the British Library and feel duty bound to share my good fortune with everyone else who cannot pay this kind of money to Eurostar and Haymarket to discuss green communications.

I arrived cynical of big brands and marketing agencies addressing an environmental agenda but interested in hearing the speakers address the subject. I was not disappointed. Jonathon Porritt (Forum for the Future) started things off with a sobering overview. Next, John Grant (of The Green Marketing Manifesto) set the tone for the day early in the morning with his memorable line about Green Consumer Research 'Brilliant at justifying. Useless at strategizing'. I took this as a good sign.

John Gisby discussed the importance of acknowledging and working with difficult emotions. We have a tough brief with climate change – we are asking people to stop doing things they enjoy. Is it possible? Gisby looked at ways of reframing the debate by looking at the words we use, harnessing emotions to drive change, and making this change real and visible. Raising awareness is one thing, he claims, but behaviour change is another and we need to recognize that our emotions are greater motivators than scientific arguments.

Ben Terrett of The Design Conspiracy gave a talk; 'Designers – Its our Fault' that implored industry to use designers better. Claiming that design is a way of thinking, he says to companies, 'Don't just use us (design...

I've been looking all over for websites on social and ethical design and by accident i saw the link for design 21. I've seen this link before but I didnt bother clicking it for reasons I cant remember... I'm mighty glad I clicked the link for this site that this time around . :D

What made me google social design again was to look for recent conferences in social design, as our group Idea!s is mounting a presentation of sustainable and social design works from the different sectors of the creative industry here in the Philippines. People from advertising, architecture, graphic design etc. will give a slideshow of sample works and share it with other people. Idea!s is also tasked to present some of the successful campaigns we've made and current projects we're brewing for the nonprofit sector.

Allow me to explain briefly what Idea!s do. Idea!s is a non-stock, non-profit organization run by a group of young creative professionals who simply want to make people aware of the great stuff people are up to nowadays. we provide multimedia communications solutions for development organizations. We construct strategically planned designs and materials that cater to the specific needs of cause-oriented organizations. by patronizing our services, our paying clients help us subsidize and support smaller organizations with their communications needs.

Why development organizations? Because we believe in the positive change these organizations contribute to society. We believe these...

I don't know what happens with me. I was trying to compete in many design awards, but it seems not work. I don't know if I worked too less, if my design was too easy, or if I was too low experienced.

What do you think a good design should be? Must it be something that tells the others what they want to hear, or should it just express what the designer wanted to say?

In my opinion, I cannot design something against my own belief though the others are trying to tell me that it is what I should agree.

Everywhere we look, the news this week is that the world moved into "ecological overdraft" last Saturday, the point at which human consumption exceeds the ability of the earth to sustain it in any year and goes into the red, The New Economics Foundation think-tank said.

From Saturday 6 October, the world as a whole goes into ecological debt driven by over-consumption. 'Ecological debt day' is the date when, in effect, humanity uses-up the resources the earth has available for the year, and begins eating into its stock of natural resources. World ecological debt day has crept ever earlier in the year since humanity first began living beyond its environmental means in the 1980's. The latest available data reveals that the overuse of the earth's resources is much more extreme in rich countries. For example, if everyone in the world wanted to live like people in the UK, on a very conservative estimate, we would need more than three planets like Earth.

NEWS HEADLINES:

• 06.10.06: NEF : Ecological Debt Day
• 06.10.06: Environmental News Network

Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it.

"I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize,” Gore said in a statement. “We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.”

Gore won an Academy Award this year for his film An Inconvenient Truth a documentary on global warming, and had been widely expected to win the prize. Climate change campaigner Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

"His strong commitment, reflected in political activity, lectures, films and books, has strengthened the struggle against climate change," the Nobel citation said. "He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted."

HEADLINE NEWS:

• 12.10.07: BBC
• 12.10.07: MSNBC
• 12.10.07: Inhabitat

Jacques Cousteau via Youtube

Remember when science was exciting and beautiful? Sometimes I wonder if Jacques Cousteau's wonderfully genuine love of science and nature were still around, would the future look a little less...bleak? Old issues of National Geographic are so much more seductive than the new ones...the new ones are just too glossy and pristine-looking. While we're at it, why are textbooks so unprovoking and aesthetically hideous?

Just thinking...

A new competition that challenges designers to improve the visual representation of eco-statistics. Check out Eyebeam’s sponsorship of the Eco-Vis Challenge - you can submit an eco-icon or a graphic representation of a set of important environmental data.

Deadlines are November 5th and December 8th.

The Challenge

1. Eco Icons

Create one or many information graphics that could be used to make visible environmental / ecological concerns

Thematically, these are icons that engage the politics of information and the persuasion of graphics. Examples of icons could include logos for web sites, stickers to place on objects or buildings, drawings/patterns to draw or stencil on to streets and buildings, stickers/tags that could be shopdropped in stores with information about the environmental impact of a product. You can invent a whole range of icons and their uses.

The Eco Icons Challenge will end on Monday, November 5, 2007.

1. Eco-Vis

Create an eco-visualization based on at least one set of ecological impact data

Your job as an “eco-visualizer” is to reveal hidden ways of thinking and to suggest alternative frameworks to a theme or various themes, and at least one data set. This could take the form of dynamic data visualization, a print graphic, a real-world intervention, or some other inventive form. The key is to create a greater understanding of the theme or data through clear and inventive design.

The Eco-Vis Challenge will end on Saturday, December 8, 2007.

Poss...

Corte Madera, California- Through a unique collaboration with Amber Lotus Publishers, greenmuseum.org, an online museum of environmental art, is proud to announce its first Calendar: "Environmental Art 2008: Contemporary art in the Natural World". "To our knowledge, this is the first wall calendar to address the global environmental art movement and Amber Lotus is the first major calendar company to print the pages of all its wall calendars with 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper," says Sam Bower, Executive Director of greenmuseum.org. "In terms of the medium and the message, it's a great partnership."

The artworks featured in the Environmental Art 2008 wall calendar were drawn from the global archives of greenmuseum.org, a not-for-profit online museum of environmental art. The calendar provides a sampling of some of the latest developments in this field to stimulate the imagination and promote the role of art in the creation of a more sustainable world culture. "By calling attention to this work in a popular medium such as a calendar we hope to show more people what's possible and inspire the creation of new work," says Bower. A portion of the Calendar sales will go to support the work of greenmuseum.org.

Please visit www.greenmuseum.org to learn more about this movement and join us in the global effort to make what's good for our communities and ecosystems even better. The Environmental Art 2008 calendar is available for sale o...

do you ever wonder why I want to write poems?. Well, my mother read me poetry books that made me keen to them. I found that poetry is fun and it’s an inspiration in my life. It makes me feel its way and think that I am in the poem. I wrote a poem to my mother called “When I am Happy” . She loved it a lot so that she started to show her friends and her staff at her office. She still keeps it though now days. From that day on, I continued writing poems and finally started to show them to everyone. Hope all the poems and stories i write i nice.

Helena

ROGER, the young designmagazine is preparing its next issue. The title is »Hidden and Sought« and deals with the invisibility of design.

You'll probably know the book of Lucius Burckhardt where he explains his idea of the invisible structures that influence people and are so a kind of design. Also Burckhardt used the term »Design for Conviviality« - design that allows and advances community.

Our non-profit ROGER (I am one of the people behind it) is looking for projects that work with the invisibilty of design - wether it's surveillance cameras, service designs, nanotechnology design... the possibilities are broad! As the seperation of design into disciplines like graphic, industrial or whatever design, action from all fields is welcome!