Design Ignites Change - News

Announcing _School: by Design_ youth mentoring initiative

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:34:11 +0000

Design Ignites Change, Adobe Youth Voices and the Designers Accord announce an exciting youth mentoring initiative that asks high school students – in collaboration with professional or college design mentors – to “redesign your school.”

For School: by Design, mentoring teams will examine the school “ecosystem” from the student’s vantage point to re-imagine a more sustainable school, one that will improve now and continue to grow and thrive in the future. The project will connect students to a subject they know well, and one on which they probably have strong opinions.

“Our goal for this program is to make sustainability relevant and integrated in the lives of our mentors and students” says Valerie Casey, founder of the Designers Accord. “We will do this by using our schools as a canvas, and design thinking as our toolset. We will push beyond the customary notions of green design and eco-friendliness, to the more meaningful aspects of cultural, social and economic sustainability.”

The goal of the initiative is to engage students in thinking about the pressing problems in their school in a mindful and creative way, to come up with solutions that account for a diversity of ideas, perspectives and approaches to learning. Teams will be encouraged to create integrated solutions that consider the student in the classroom, the classroom in the school and the school in the community.

Engaging the creative community

The program can be adopted by a range of creative disciplines including but not limited to:
» Architecture
» Industrial design
» Interior design
» Graphic design
» Environmental graphics
» Interactive design
» The initiative can also encompass illustration and photography.

Step-by-step guidelines make it easy

The six to eight week, self-guided program is designed to be easily executed at any time by the following groups who will serve as mentors:
» Professional design organizations
» Professional design studios
» College and university design programs

Each participating mentor organization or school will identify mentors within their constituency and pair them with local high schools students under the supervision and guidance of Design Ignites Change. Conversely, if a local high school or youth group wishes to participate, Design Ignites Change will work with them to identify possible mentors in their area.

A step-by-step set of guidelines and curriculum are available to make the mentoring experience easy to execute, and Design Ignites Change team will be on hand to consult on all aspects of the program. The materials will give the inexperienced mentor the tools they need to successfully complete the project while providing a rewarding experience for the student and themselves.

Showcasing and supporting great projects

Projects will be featured on the Design Ignites Change and Designers Accord websites, and particularly noteworthy projects will be promoted to the press. At the end of 2010, all submitted projects will be eligible to receive an award to fund the implementation of their project within their school.

_Design Ignites Change_ brings the best ideas to life through its inaugural Implementation Awards program

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:41:34 +0000

Design Ignites Change, a collaboration between Adobe Youth Voices and Worldstudio, is excited to announce the inaugural 2009 Implementation Award winners: PieLab’s Pecans! and Kansas City Art Institute’s A Book by its Cover: Reading Stereotypes and Freewall: Making Space for Diversity. The biannual award program recognizes exceptional proposals for design intended to make the world a better place, and grants their creators the financial support to realize those visions.

The grand prize award goes to Pecans!, a budding pecan product enterprise – led by low-income youth – in Hale County, Alabama. Here, recent design school graduates, contributing their energy and talents to PieLab, a community design center in downtown Greensboro, mentor 16-24 year-old high school dropouts participating in the Department of Labor’s YouthBuild Program. The $12,000 award serves as the capital to get the business off the ground, in turn providing the youth a chance to expand their skill sets: everything from perfecting the best pecan brittle recipe, to developing a brand identity and market strategy, all while completing their high school diplomas or GEDs. “We are ecstatic,” says Robin Moody from Pielab, “we have been looking for a way to help fund this idea and are now so grateful to have the ability to carry it out. We worked hard on really fleshing out the application and are so glad to see the work paid off. It’s exciting to partner with Worldstudio on a project that has a positive impact on local youth.”

A second place prize of $2,400 was awarded to A Book by its Cover: Reading Stereotypes, a project that aims to uproot racism by fostering positive, meaningful connections between Arab and non-Arab students. Set between two schools: the Islamic School of Greater Kansas City and Garfield Elementary, also in Kansas City, this pen-pal-like book exchange project, conceived by Ramzy Masri, a student at the Kansas City Art Institute, begins by opening up a conversation about prejudice that evolves into a rich exchange involving students’ experiences, and culminates in a surprise reveal around identity.

Simple yet compelling, Freewall: Making Space for Diversity, wins the third place prize, for offering a proactive answer to bullying. This project created by Logan Smith, a student at Kansas City Art Institute, creatively repurposes empty wall space at Center Alternative School into a personal expression of the student body. Each student is invited to design a warm-colored sticker around the theme of something he or she loves, and to post it to a 5’X5’ cool-colored patchwork display. The eye-catching collaboration will transform and grow to feature 288 unique designs when complete. The award of $250 will be used to cover the cost of supplies.

Tyler Galloway, a faculty member at Kansas City Art Institute who was integral to the school’s Design Ignites Change effort says, “It’s going to be an amazing learning experience to step beyond the classroom with these projects that are context-specific and require face-to-fact contact and audience response. It’s great validation for the work. They are examples of design that goes beyond the artifact itself.”

The jury also identified six promising proposals for honorable mention: Frugal Food: Eating on SNAP; Save Money, Save the Planet: Tag Along; Anchor: Campus Crime Prevention; Design for Eco and Social Sustainability; Sanitation Solution; How Much Do You Know About Plastic?; and Break the Jam! Save Money, Save Time. With the idea that these projects would benefit greatly from a little more time in the incubator, jurors, Michele Ronsen and Mark Westlund have generously offered to help these teams refine their proposals and resubmit for the next round of awards in June.

The Design Ignites Change Implementation Award is granted twice a year to student initiatives that exhibit a powerful and provocative solution to a pressing social problem. Reviewed by an independent committee of creative professionals, business, civic and non-profit leaders, the submissions are evaluated on concept, viability, potential of impact, as well as a detailed plan for timely execution. Here are thoughts from several of this year’s jurors on participating in the process:

“I was excited to see how many diverse topics the students tackled. Some of their proposals lacked realistic business strategies for implementation, but that fearlessness is precisely what’s so refreshing about how students approach solutions. I look forward to following the winning projects as they come to life in their communities in the coming year.”
- Gaby Brink, Founder, Creative Director, Tomorrow Partners / Co-chair, AIGA Center for Sustainable Design

“It’s incredibly exciting to be a part of a jury that is truly encouraging others to think about how to make the world a better place as well as rewarding and recognizing their meaningful efforts. The winners should be incredibly proud of their ideas and implementation plans.”
- Michele Ronsen, VP, Creative Director, Wells Fargo

“I personally draw a lot inspiration from our youth. Their innocence and freshness of ideas and awareness of doing the right thing for their communities is extremely inspiring to me. I am grateful that I was able to participate in this program. It made me stop and think about how, eventually, ideas from one and all matter. It isn’t about one big solution for everything and everyone – but small ones that are meaningful, simple and can be executed that make all the difference.”
Mala Sharma, Director of Consumer and Hosted Solutions, Adobe

“I was inspired that there are so many good ideas out there, and so many brilliant minds in the coming generation that are working on solutions to environmental, social and economic justice.”
- Mark Westlund, Public Information Program Manager, Department of the Environment, City and County of San Francisco

About Design Ignites Change
Design Ignites Change, a collaboration between Adobe Youth Voices and Worldstudio, engages high school and college students in multidisciplinary design and architecture projects that address pressing social issues. Participants are encouraged to apply design thinking—the combination of unleashed creativity and executable actions—to problems that exist in their own communities.

About Adobe Youth Voices
Adobe Youth Voices is Adobe Foundation’s global signature philanthropy program designed to provide youth in underserved communities with critical 21st century skills they need to become active and engaged members of their communities and the world at large.

Additional program partners include: AIGA, the professional association for design; Designers Accord; Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and Williams & House. Media partners include: Core 77, Design Observer, Graphic Design USA and Taxi Design Network.

Contact:
Andréa Pellegrino
Partner
Worldstudio
212.366.1317 x18
apellegrino(at)worldstudioinc.com

Worldstudio and School of Visual Arts launch
Impact! Design for Social Change

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:54:21 +0000

Impact! Design for Social Change
A six week intensive workshop
July 12 – August 20, 2010

Worldstudio and the School of Visual Arts in New York City are launching an exciting six week summer intensive called Impact! Design for Social Change.

To remain competitive, corporations are looking for innovation and impact in the area of social change as it relates to their business. The non-profit world is seeking new ways to support their constituencies through design strategy. This six-week summer intensive will introduce participants to the growing field of design for social advocacy.

The program – co-founded by Steven Heller, Co-chair, SVA MFA Design and Mark Randall, Worldstudio – will run on two parallel tracks; the first will educate students on how to conceive and execute their own projects for social change with a focus on funding projects that are not client-based. For the second track students will participate in the development and full execution of a team project that addresses a pressing need within a predetermined community. The team projects for the program are being selected in partnership with desigNYC – a group of leading designers and design advocates with a mission of improving life in New York City by helping connect the nonprofit and professional design communities.

The faculty – in formation – is composed of leaders in the area of design for social change:
Chad Boettcher, Senior Vice President, Social Innovation, Weber Shandwick
Martin Kace, founder, Empax
Bob McKinnon founder, Yellow Brick Road
Mark Randall and Andréa Pellegrino, partners, Worldstudio

A series of ten lectures featuring leaders in the areas of design and social change will be presented. The speaker list to date includes:
Scott Harrison, founder, charity: water
David Gibson, partner, Two Twelve Associates
Milton Glaser, principal, Milton Glaser, Inc.
Jason Rzepka, Vice President, Public Affairs, MTV
Edwin Schlossberg, founder, ESI Design

To learn more about this program visit: http://www.sva.edu/impact

stART now: change is central

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:00:13 +0000

Design Ignites Change was the catalyst for an exciting mentoring program led by University of Tennessee undergrads who engaged local high school students to address issues in their school and local community. Every year the University of Tennessee offers a special topics class within the graphic design curriculum. Professor Deb Shmerler and Central High School art teacher, Peggy Leland, joined together to offer their students the unique opportunity to collaborate on projects for social change. Shmerler and Leland made the decision to take a back seat and let the students run the initiative, acting in the roles of facilitator or consultant.

The UT students also made a conscious decision to let the Central students help choose the issues they cared about. Shmerler said, “It would have been much easier for my students to walk in with a defined problem and simply have the Central students help them solve it. But that would have made the Central students feel like they were only problem solvers and not problem finders as well. It also made them feel more like they were the leaders driving the individual projects.”

The UT and Central students defined six areas of focus and broke up into groups based on their interests: War & Violence, Green/Recycling, Education, Health, Eco-Gardening and Poverty. Even though the students were working on different teams they wanted their projects to be linked so they developed a unifying name for their mentoring program that would remain relevant in the future. The overall name became stART now: change is central.

Once a week, for fourteen weeks, the UT students met with the Central students at the high school for about an hour. They spent the first two weeks getting to know each other and teaching the high school students about design. Following the brainstorm session that revealed the six themes, the groups worked independently on their projects. For most of the University of Tennessee undergrads it was their first experience teaching and they strived to demonstrate design process and design thinking each step of the way.

All the groups tried to create projects that would impact the whole high school, not just the 26 art students. One project to come out of stART now was a short documentary about problems at Central High. The goal was to open a dialogue between the students, administration and faculty. Central and UT students conducted interviews for the film, asking questions such as: Are there any voices at Central that should be heard but aren’t? Are stu¬dents involved in making decisions about what and how they learn? What aspects of Central should be changed? What is good about Central?

By the end of the semester, many students felt that the social change mentoring class should be a requirement, not just an elective, and that it should be open to the entire university. Professor Shmerler reflected, “Working with the high school students on Design Ignites Change really empowered the college students. Their whole perspective on what it means to effect change as a designer can evolve in one semester. It couldn’t happen in a week or two but over the course of a semester, a shift takes place.”

Sustaining San Francisco

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:34:27 +0000

Phil Hamlett, graduate director of the MFA graphic design program and founding co-chair of the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design, has been teaching a course in sustainability for the past three years at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. When he became aware of Design Ignites Change, he realized it was a natural fit for his course to be integrated with the program. The Academy saw Design Ignites Change as a chance to encourage work for social good while, at the same time, targeting a couple key issues for the school. Since its inception, they’ve been using the program as an opportunity for cross-disciplinary study, having four graduate departments participate, as well as a chance to get alumni involved as mentors for the MFA students.

To unify the projects across the Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Fashion Design and Photography departments, AAU developed a theme, Sustaining San Francisco. The Academy of Art University is the largest private art and design school in the country, with a tremendous presence in San Francisco. Through Sustaining San Francisco, Hamlett hoped to localize the Academy’s response to Design Ignites Change, leveraging the school’s local presence and relating the projects to the neighborhood. The resulting student work touched upon a wide variety of issues and businesses in the Bay Area. An example of an innovative project to come out of Sustaining San Francisco is Mooko by Shihwen Wang. She and another industrial design student designed a supermarket milk vending machine and a reusable bottle as well as print materials to promote the principle of sustainability to both the farming system and the packaging design of an organic dairy line.

The first run of Sustaining San Francisco took place over the course of spring semester 2009 and culminated with the work being presented at AAU’s Spring Show which was attended by hundreds of visitors, including numerous professionals in the design industry. Hamlett and the other professors plan to continue Sustaining San Francisco over the coming years to build a body of work and compelling in-depth story. Several other classes have also joined Design Ignites Change, including web design.

When asked why the Academy of Art University wanted to be a part of Design Ignites Change, Hamlett explained that historically the Academy has focused on building portfolios and helping their graduates find work but, over time, he has noticed that students have an itch they want to scratch—to use their skills other than for commercial gain. This desire to do work that is fulfilling is not exclusive from the real world. Many studios and companies are also building these concepts into their business models. He believes there are a growing number of viable applications for the skills Design Ignites Change cultivates. Hamlett says you can, “do this type of work and eat too!”

Students involved with Design Ignites Change are set on a path to continue doing work for social good in the future and, by being part of a bigger network, their work gains exposure and becomes more tangible. One particular graphic design project from Sustaining San Francisco has already gained considerable recognition. WHOLE, by MFA student Katy Liao, won judges choice in the AIGA cause/affect competition and 2nd place for the student environmental sustainability category in the AIGA (re)design awards.

Design Ignites Change - News

Announcing _School: by Design_ youth mentoring initiative

_Design Ignites Change_ brings the best ideas to life through its inaugural Implementation Awards program

Worldstudio and School of Visual Arts launch Impact! Design for Social Change

stART now: change is central

Sustaining San Francisco

Worldstudio and School of Visual Arts launch
Impact! Design for Social Change