Design 21: Social Design Network

Q. How many World Changing actions can you fit into 45 seconds? Well, here's what one answer from the team at WeAreWhatWeDo.

London based Communication and Public Service Design agency thinkpublic and The Ideal Government Project are inviting everyone to help design better public services, in a competition called Mind the Gap.

The competition is an exciting collaboration between thinkpublic's Real Work Experience - launched last November, and The Ideal Government's "Wibbipedia".

So, if you are a designer or someone who has an idea for improving public services, submit an idea! All you have to do is describe a public service exactly as it is, and then describe how good it could be.

For more information visit MIND THE GAP.

Why is Graphic Design so afraid to embrace the sustainability challenge?

During the first few months writing for sustainability design blog Inhabitat.com, it became immediately and increasingly evident how many designers were bathing in the new challenges of sustainability. The worlds of fashion, architecture, interior and product design continued to excel with an ecological conscience, launching countless contemporary designs every week. Although not focused to the work of Graphic Design, taking a quick look around Inhabitat it is evident a sense of contemporary Communication Design is appreciated. Critical dialogue however, discussing the relevant relationships between sustainability and graphic design, is almost vacant (with no more than 15-20 graphic-related features on the site). This, it would seem is a recurring trend in the sustainable design communities.

I was therefore, excited to have read this week that respectable designer, writer and critic Anna Gerber is currently writing a new book on Graphic Design and Sustainability, which will be published by Laurence King in Spring 2009. I look forward to her book and hope it will open the eyes of Communication Designers, give them a friendly kick in a sustainable direction and ultimately help our discipline play catch up to the rest of the creative industry.

Designer and author of the 2004 publication All Messed Up, Unpredictable Graphics, Anna Gerber continues to write extensively for the likes of Creative Review, Pri...

Last night I came across a magnificent online resource and initiative dedicated to socially conscious design, its name Creative For A Cause.

Founded and set up by Syracuse senior and fellow D21 member Heidi Cies, Creative For A Cause (A Resource for Visual Communications Educators) aims to assist teaching social responsibility in design education.

"While social responsibility is being discussed more and more frequently within the Visual Communications industry and among educators today, no standards or guidelines currently exist to aid in the implementation of these concepts into the higher education curriculum. Where social responsibility is not already part of a Visual Communications program, and there is little or no administrative support for inclusion, it is left to individual instructors to decide how to best integrate this topic into their syllabi. This site is a collaborative resource for educators of Visual Communications who wish to instruct their students on the importance of adopting a social and ethical approach to their work. If you know of additional resources that you feel would be of value, please contact us." (Heidi Cies, Creative For A Cause).

Heidi, well done - this is a fantastic project that is certainly going to prove extremely useful. I look forward to our future conversations.

• Creative For A Cause.
• Via. Randy J. Hunt

I am sure the majority of you will have seen and heard of Project M Design, founded by John Bielenberg, but I wanted to make sure the This is Not Grass publication was highlighted on Design21. What a fantastic project, that illustrates the real possibilities of Graphic Designers when they think socially, ethically and (initially) away from the computer.

"During the Summer of 2006, a small group of designers drove from the rural coast of Maine to the urban center of East Baltimore with one goal... to make a positive and significant impact on a blighted community. What they discovered when they arrived, was that they were in way over their heads. The social and political machines had been in motion long before they stepped into town and the scale of the problems were staggering. There seemed to be no hope and little they could do as designers to help a city stricken with such alarming poverty and hopelessness." - This is Not Grass.

Find out more about Project M and its designers:

• How Magazine
• GOOD Magazine.

Earlier this month, Armin Vit wrote an interesting review of renowned artist and designer Luba Lukova latest poster collection, Social Justice 2008.

Armin Vit: "Social Justice is a very satisfying collectible for any graphic designer. Individually or as a group, these posters are a reminder of how much can be achieved through such economic visual means."

Amazon.com: "Social Justice 2008 is a powerful portfolio that features 12 thought-provoking posters by world-renowned artist and designer Luba Lukova. This collection swiftly and ably showcases Lukova's masterful use of metaphors and symbols to express themes that include peace, war, ecology, immigration, and privacy. Her distinctive style and vigorous visual imagination distill issues such as these into deceptively simple, yet formidably brilliant images, images that not only transfix, but that have the power to become indelible."

• Luba Lukova
• SpeakUp, Book Review
• Social Justice 2008 - Amazon.com

I think too much of design is too dumb' by Tim McKeough

What's the most important role of design today?

Design is a big area to work in and there are many different sides, but I think there's definitely a cultural value to what we do. It's really important that design remembers how to put value into daily life. That's our goal. It's not just to make it more efficient or to make products that you can sell more of. Consumerism is not interesting. That's not the role of design. Design means thinking about sustainability and culture. We should be much more intelligent about how we build our world. I think too much of design is too dumb.

Feature written for DesignSessions: Are You a Good Designer?

When I was first asked to contribute a piece on design ethics to Design Sessions: Notes on Design, I wondered how I could credibly comment on such a complex and highly academic topic. Whilst sitting at the early stages of my creative career, I wondered how many of us really understand what it means to be a “good” designer, and asked myself, if and how, I am a “good” (socially-responsible) designer?

Design Ethics

Throughout every stage of my creative training, I have echoed the belief that design is “quintessentially an ethical process” (Devon and Poel 2002). I strongly believe that Communication Design has a positive and negative ability to affect social change, but recognize that its influential power should be treated with respect and careful consideration, of its use, from all its designers.

Ethics is not an appendage to design but an integral part of it, and we advocate using the moral imagination to draw out the ethical implications of a design. We will stress and develop the social ethics paradigm, because design is an iterative social process for making technical and social decisions that may itself be designed at each stage with different people at the table, different information flows, different normative relationships, different authority structures, and different social and environmental considerations in mind. […] One might make the distinction that professional ethics is concerned with...

London College of Communication are hosting the New Views 2 Symposium and Exhibition this coming July, entitled "Conversations and Dialogue in Graphic Design". Although the call for papers is now closed, the conference registration is online and a call for poster submissions is underway.

"By facilitating large and smaller more focused groups of delegates, New Views 2, aims to identify the challenges we are currently facing in graphic design, but more importantly proposing potential ways forward."

The suggested themes that New Views 2 may cover:

• Problems of defining terminology: visual communication, communication design, graphic design, information environments.
• The role of graphic design for the ‘real world’.
• Graphic design and interdisciplinarity.
• Graphic design and research methods.
• Design writing/criticism and repositioning the debate.
• Practice-led PhD research in the field of graphic design.
• Responsive curriculums and shifting paradigms.
• Research, innovation and new critical thinking.

New Views 2 has asked for poster submissions that "through the use of graphic language, address the issues and the core themes of the conference and demonstrate the use of graphic design as a means to critique and reflect upon its future." Individuals or groups, Design students, Design Faculty and Professional Design Studio submissions were all welcome (more details on the website) and the selected works will be included in the traveling exhibition an...

Following the success of last month's initiative to fund 75 Hippo Rollers for South African community Kgautswane, Project H Design is at it again!

Emily is currently in Uganda and informs me she has just launched the latest Project H initiative - Lifestraws for Mumbai! At only $25 each, Project H Design aims to donate 100 (or more!) Lifestraw Family systems to Mumbai, India.

Lifestraw Family is an amazing point-of-use water filtration device designed and manufactured by Vestergaard Frandsen that eliminates 99.999% of waterborne disease bacteria, parasites, and viruses, bringing clean drinking water quickly and reliably, and preventing life-threatening disease from spreading through unclean water.

Support is needed again, to help with the success of this project, so why not help this initiative and sponser a Lifestraw! $25 sponsors one Lifestraw family system.

To find out everything about the Lifestraw project visit, Project H Design.

• Design21 Feature: Project Leader, Emily Pilloton