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London, United Kingdom
Designer (Graphic Design)
Member since June 13, 2007
Environment, Communication Design
Famed Graphic Designer Marian Bantjes designed the poster for last night's Practivism, a speaker series talk on Sustainability run by The Society of Graphic Designers/BC Chapter.
Guest Speakers included Marc Alt, Brian Dougherty and Eric Karjaluoto who presented their strategies and suggestions for practical activism within a design practice.
This poster is a refreshing example that Green graphics don't have to be green.
Posted November 14, 2008 in Socially Conscious Graphic Design
Responses (1)
Education, Communication Design
In preparation for The Real Work Experience workshops later this month, last Thursday nine graduate and undergraduate designers took part in an engaging afternoon of workshop training!
Arriving at the thinkpublic studio from Bristol, Brighton, Bournemouth, Glasgow, London, Kent and Leeds our leading designers are each running workshops on Friday 21st November to explore what young designers need to enable them to use their skills for social causes.
After a fun ‘make a sound, pass it on’ icebreaker session, we asked the designers to draw a picture of their workshop (and then humorously offered the opportunity to analyse them). We then briefed the group through the stages of how to run their workshops and gave each of them informative toolkits to take away. Thanks to everyone who came along on Thursday, we hope you had as much fun as we did! There are plenty of photos of the training day here and we wish you all the best of luck for the 21st!
The “Design for Social Change” workshops will run at the following institutions:
If you are a young designer based in the UK and would like to partic...
Posted November 11, 2008 in Socially Conscious Graphic Design
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Environment, Industrial Design
Earlier this autumn, Sophie Thomas from the design firm thomas.matthews, Sarah Johnson from [re]design, and Anne Chick from the Sustainable Design Research Centre at Kingston University launched Greengaged, London Design Festival's inaugural sustainability event series. Held at the UK Design Council, Greengaged set out to examine the ecological crisis, explore the role of design and debate the consequential responsibility of designers.
For one of the events, 25 designers, writers and academics from an array of disciplines took residence on the Beauchamp 'Electric Barge', to begin a trip to Powerday waste recycling plant in west London. Docked at Little Venice in Paddington, the electrically powered barge is a silently running and environmentally sound answer to canal travel.
"Waste is a design flaw." Kate Krebs, National Recycling Coalition, 2008.
After skipper Ian ironically removed the plastic bags tied up around the boat's rudder, Anne Chick, from Kingston University's Sustainable Design Research Centre, led the day's events and introduced the day's speaker, Rob Holdway, Founder of Giraffe Innovation and Presenter of Channel 4's "Dumped" series. Rob took the opportunity to introduce his work, knowledge of the environmental crisis and the important role that designers have to influence change in our overly wasteful society. Rob described his 'Dumped' experiment which, earlier this year, took 11 unsuspecting eco-volunteers to an East Croydon landfill a...
Posted November 05, 2008 in DESIGN 21
Responses (4)
Communication, Communication Design
The latest video from the UK Design Council has wonderfully captured the essence of design.
This video really does illustrate how simple we need to be when explaining the power of design to non designers.
Posted October 27, 2008 in Socially Conscious Graphic Design
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Communication, Communication Design
On Friday 21st November, final year and graduate designers will run simultaneous workshops up and down the country, in an exciting stage two of The Real Work Experience!
Exploring how designers can play a role in social improvement, we are asking young designers to consider what “The Real Work Experience” could do for them? Could it be an online network that bridges the gap between education and seeking (socially engaged) work? Could it be a mentoring program, or a regular series of events that discuss design’s wider potential? What do designers and graduates need, to be able to use their skills to tackle social issues? What does a movement toward socially responsible design look like to you?
Competition:
Each workshop will run for approximately three hours and each group will be asked to discuss, develop and design a concept for the future of the initiative. The ‘outcome’ to the workshop can be in any format you wish - maybe a prototype, diagram or a well written out concept. thinkpublic will then choose a winning idea and that team will be awarded support to put it into reality. We essentially want you to become a part of the future development of The Real Work Experience program!
Locations (more info soon!):
Prior to the workshops, our lead ...
Posted October 13, 2008 in Socially Conscious Graphic Design
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Education, Communication Design
Great feature from Mariana Amatullo has been published on Core77 this month.
"Let us seize this opportunity to advance design's potential for social impact. Let us seize on the optimism of a new generation of students by providing them with more choices for real-world exposure. Let us envision and embrace this vision of the future by providing a collaborative framework and the right tools and methodologies to put forward-thinking designers in the driver's seat of social change." - Mariana Amatullo, co-founding director of Designmatters.
(Image: "This is My Home" by Cindy Chen, Graphic Design, a final poster from a transdisciplinary studio, instructors Martha Rich and Esther Watson, Illustration).
Posted October 10, 2008
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Communication, Communication Design
In conjunction with NYTimes.com, the AIGA's Ric Grefé and Jessica Friedman Hewitt have developed an interactive demonstration of how good ballot design can improve the voting experience.
Via. DesignObserver
Posted September 03, 2008 in Socially Conscious Graphic Design
Responses (1)
Education, Communication Design
In June, San Francisco based designer Arvi Raquel-Santos spent 4 weeks in Hale County, Alabama with Project M, John Bielenberg's famed summer programme set up to inspire designers to see that their work can have a positive and significant social impact.
Recognising the importance of ensuring talented designers have the opportunity to attend Project M (which costs $2000 each), Arvi has founded Design That Cares, "a socially based design collaborative", which is selling posters pitching the Project M ethos "Think Wrong".
For sale at only $35.00, the donations will go directly to help other designers attend the programme. Avri is also using a Facebook Cause Page to gain support.
Fabulous work.
Posted August 24, 2008 in Socially Conscious Graphic Design
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Communication, Communication Design
In June 2008, the Rockefeller Foundation invited a group of designers to explore models to accelerate design innovation leading to social change.
A report has been published that describes the actions and commitments that emerged from the meeting.
Posted August 22, 2008
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Environment, Communication Design
The 2008 London Design Festival will see the launch of Greengaged, a series of events, debates, workshops, exhibitions, seminars and masterclasses held at the UK Design Council.
Entirely focused on sustainability issues, <a href="http://www.greengaged.com/">Greengaged</a> has been organised by [re]design, thomas.matthews and Kingston University.
Posted August 22, 2008
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“The best way to predict the future is to design it.” - Buckminster Fuller
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