Design 21: Social Design Network

firebelly design rocks with a number of awesome ventures... camp firebelly, reason to give, the firebelly design grant, plus beautiful design that makes a difference every day. read their ethos and you'll understand why: http://firebellydesign.com/about/ethos

it would be great to meet them because they are as unique as it gets in a field of trends. they offer a business model that stands on it's own. they prove that design can really make a difference. and they don't just do it by talking, they do it by acting.

i would ask them how are they able to do all they do for their community + design, plus continue to make great work + seemingly make a profit.

Super Nature Design, http://www.supernaturedesign.com

LOVE NATURE, GOOD DESIGN

He's a visual artist, awsome work, very sensitive. Cares about new ways of doing things, cares about the impact on users/spectatoras. Check him out! http://vimeo.com/groups/openframeworks/videos/4706049

After reading part of his book, 'In the Bubble' on Google Scholar, I immediately bought it and have read it many times since. he talks about connecting communities, designing a way towards a truly sustainable future, designing for people and society, and relying on people - not stuff. He has been involved in many social projects and he's been a real inspiration to me.

My question would be: How does industrial design fit comfortably in a world that needs less stuff? We can reduce the impact that stuff makes, and we can raise awareness of the impact we make, even try to design our way back to a sustained Earth, but at the end of the day, it's the boss who decides that what the world needs is another range of useless food packaging, or another novelty roof decoration for Christmas.

Daniel wrote the book A WHOLE NEW MIND. Following his assertion that we are moving into the Cognition Age, I'd like to know his views on the use of, and importance of "story" as a means to articulate design concepts that one cobbles together inside the mind. How to channel Right-Directed thinking?

Bruce Mau is an acclaimed Canadian designer and founder of the Institute without Boundaries (IwB). A major thread of his work--especially his IwB work--is concerned with designing solutions to the world's problems.

The exhibit and book he and the IwB put out in 2003-2004 has been influential in my own research, as I see an ethical imperative to bend scholarship toward justice in a practical, designed approach.

He'd be great to interview.

db

It's not like I haven't heard what he's got to say, but he has proved a direct relationship between design and concrete, socially useful results. He's always up-to-date in design and social issues, so he always comes up with new conclusions and facts in these areas.

that's my vote.

BF mexico

http://www.livework.co.uk/

pushing the realms of service based design.

http://www.valcasey.com/ http://www.designersaccord.org/

I'd love to interview Valerie Casey, 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.

One of the most famous Idol architects and designers of our time- if not THE ARCHITECT (for me at least), Rem Koolhaass amazing visions stir art and architecture towards new dimentions and show that in this area there is a lot to be explored. His completely new interpretations of society, progress, space, culture and etc. are a brilliant example of modern thinking and reveal new paths for the young generations of architects and designers to follow. It would be incredible to hear some of his thoughts and ideas. I give my vote to him!

John Emerson, www.backspace.com/notes. The man has influenced "generations" of designers and activists (since May 2002). Quoting the July/August 2005 issue of Print Magazine: “Most designers agree, even insist, that design is more than clever imagery selling goods and services — it also influences how societies function. Social Design Notes, a remarkably informed and highly useful blog edited by John Emerson, explores design’s sociopolitical power and inspiration. A New York activist and designer who oversaw Web sites for Amnesty International USA and Human Rights Watch, Emerson launched his blog is 2002 as a ‘bridge between design activism — to push designers to think about acting in the public interest and to help activists see how design can facilitate their campaigns.’ Emerson explores how design is used to support and challenge the status quo, posting one historical note about the ‘Black Panther Coloring Book’ created by the FBI during the civil-right movement, and another about South Africa’s use of the comic book to prepare its citizens for their first election. Emerson also discusses the built environment, praising former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani for having championed design to improve the lives of the disabled. And Social Design Notes’ Resource page contains tools — such as free stock photos — designed to convert readers into true reformers.”

http://www.ideo.com

Principal at alliedworksarchitecture.com, he sits on the low edge of hype.

His designs and redesigns of interiors, especially, focus very much on the human element. And though aesthetic seems secondary, it is not.

Firebelly does good work and they do it well. Along the lines of seemingly making a profit I'd like to hear how they manage to stay in business given current economic trends.

i know i know, my main man leo doesn't get a look in bec he's dead but let's face it if he was alive today he'd get my vote for his paradigm shifting approach to the role of design in our lives and how it can elevate humanity to heights hitherto unknown...leo i bow in humble supplication...

ps besides being a grave robber, did you know he was also a great cook and designed incredible banquets for princely courts and courtesans

(excerpt from her bio)

Katie Salen is the Executive Director of the Institute of Play, and Associate Professor in the Design and Technology program, Parsons the New School for Design. Co-author of Rules of Play, a textbook on game design, as well as The Game Design Reader (MIT Press, 2004 and 2006), she recently completed an edited volume for the MacArthur series on Digital Media and Learning called The Ecology of Games and is serving as co-editor of The International Journal of Learning and Media (MIT Press). Katie just completed a stint as lead designer on Gamestar Mechanic, a game developed by Gamelab to teach young people the play and practice of game design fundamentals. She lectures and writes extensively on game design, design education, and game culture, including authoring some of the first dispatches from the previously hidden world of machinima.

http://instituteofplay.com/node/100

http://www.gamersmob.com/

Together with peace nobel winner Muhammad Yunus the german communication expert Hans Reitz has founded the Grameen Creative Lab (http://www.grameencreativelab.com). They try to design new social businesses and social joint ventures in order to eradicate poverty. In order to do so they use design and creativity methods and especially a very interdisciplinary approach.

I read Michael Beirut in HOW Magazine's 1989 Annual, he was still working with Vignelli Associates at that time. I really believe Mr. Beirut deserved to be nominated.

Bierut was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. [1]

Bierut was vice president of graphic design at Vignelli Associates. Since 1990 he has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram. [2]

According to his Pentagram online biography: Bierut "is responsible for leading a team of graphic designers who create identity design, environmental graphic design and editorial design solutions. He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in several permanent collections including: the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA); the Denver Art Museum; the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany; and the Museum für Gestaltung in Zürich, Switzerland." [3]

Bierut served as the national president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1998 to 2001.

Bierut is a senior critic in graphic design at the Yale School of Art.

Bierut is also the co-editor of three Looking Closer graphic design anthologies. He is also a founding writer of the Design Observer blog with Rick Poynor, William Drenttel and Jessica Helfand. [4]

Bierut is also known for his involvement in the film Helvetica — "Drink Coke, period!"

Clare has battled against the odds to promote and enable sustainable development through design in the UK.

She recently set up the SEED foundation (social environmental enterprise + design) (http://www.seedfoundation.org.uk/) and is a senior tutor at the Royal College of Art.

...working tirelessly to get projects off the ground and brilliantly ignoring those who were convinced sustainability was just a passing fad :)

Founder-Director of the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, India. (www.srishti.ac.in) Geetha Narayanan is primarily an educator and institution builder, the epitome of the autodidact who enters spaces that are alien, grasps the essence of them and leverages them to design pedagogies and projects that have made a mark in India and internationally. Geetha Narayanan was one of five women who launched the Ujwal Trust and set up the Aditi International School which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year in Bangalore. Aditi remains one of the most forward international schools in India. Her deep interest in education/pedagogy, art, design, technology has led her to move across the spaces of instructional design, social design, design for the underprivileged, etc. It was this interest which led her and the Ujwal Trust to launch Srishti in 1996 in Bangalore, as an alternative to the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Moving from legacy pedagogies and leaving traditional art-design educational constructs behind, Srishti is today a vibrant hub where disciplines jostle and interpenetrate each other in a dynamix mix of multi-disciplinarity, experimentalism and international projects so that Srishti students get a very different experience of holistic and constructivist education. Why I want to nominate Geetha Narayanan is because on the one hand the West is usually over-represented in spaces like this and, on the other, art and design education/educators/institutions are hardly ever represented, though they play a key role in nurturing future artist-designers. And then again, it is rarely that a "non-designer" has done so much for art and design education - at least in India!