An article that features Designmatters frequent collaborators Un Techo para mi País Chile, whose Innovation Center was recently selected to be 1 of 7 finalists in the ICSID World Design Awards for the ongoing Safe Agua Project.

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An article highlighting the recent Friends of the Bad Weather Shelter Campaign, a collaboration between Designmatters and the City of Pasadena.

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GiraDora (design team, Alex Cabunoc & Ji A You) is a human-powered washer and spin dryer to increase efficiency and improve the experience of washing clothes by hand.

Balde a Balde (designer, Kimberly Chow) Spanish for “Bucket to bucket”  is a portable faucet that provides running water from any bucket.

VitAmigos (design team, Thomas Kong & Cora Neil)  is a new fun, playful, and interactive experience for moms and kids that brings together water purification & nutrition in a tasty beverage.

In addition to the awards, the winner’s work will be showcased in Spark’s unique design exhibition at San Francisco’s Autodesk Design Gallery and at the Guangzhou Design Week in early December.

Spark is a community of designers and creative people, bound together by the idea that design can make significant, positive changes in the world and help make it better. They promote these ideals through the annual organization of international design competitions, exhibitions, blogs and workshops.

SAFE AGUA Peru is a collaboration between Designmatters at Art Center College of Design,  the Latin American NGO, Un Techo para mi Pais and its Innovation Center.  Safe Agua aims to co-create innovative design solutions to overcome water poverty with families living in Cerro Verde, a 30,000-person slum [asentamientos] perched on the hillsides surrounding Lima, Peru.

To learn more about Safe Agua Peru click here.

Click here to read the Spark Awards press release.

Siddharth was part of the Ideabag team along with Alta Fang (Caltech), Stephanie Kato (Caltech), Cinny Sunny (ST GITS) and Sajith Sundar (ST GITS). They designed a gravitational mixing process that could considerably lessen the workload of the laborers at the Vembanad Chemicals facility in Kottayam.

As part of the class, the team/project with the best final paper with a commitment to continue implementation wins a $1000 prize. The Ideabag team plans to use the funds to help facilitate future prototyping and engineering costs when implementing the first pilot in Kottayam.

To learn more about the project check out Siddharth’s blog

Spark! Highest Award, Alex Cabunoc & Ji A You for GiraDora: Safe Agua
View Spark Awards Review
View Project

Gold, Kimberly Chow for Balde a Balde: Safe Agua
View Spark Awards Review
View Project

Bronze, Cora Neil & Thomas Kong for VitAmigos: Safe Agua
View Spark Awards Review
View Project

Finalist, Carlos Vides for Soap Buddy: Safe Agua
View Project

Finalist, Viirj Kan  & Seth Weissman for Caja del Tesoro: Safe Agua
View Project

Finalist, Mariana Prieto & Alexandra Yee for Clean + Smart: Safe Agua
View Project

Design Ignites Change Awards

Category of Implementation for Safe Agua – Ducha Halo
View Award
View Project

Ducha Halo an outcome of the Safe Agua Chile studio, is an affordable pressurized shower solution that brings the dignity and well-being of a hot shower to people living with no running water and inconsistent electricity.

Design Ignites Change is a world studio program that supports designers and architects who want to make a difference.

To learn more click here.

Open Minds is the acclaimed annual exhibition of cutting-edge innovation from NCIIA’s best student teams. The exhibition takes place each year during NCIIA’s annual conference, and is an opportunity for student teams to demonstrate their products and companies, and receive local and national media coverage.

To learn more click here.

Ezio Manzini is a professor at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Parsons, the New School for Design, in New York. For more than two decades, Manzini has been working in the field of design for sustainability. Most recently, his interests are focused specifically on social innovation as a major driver of sustainable changes and what design can do to support it. With this perspective, he founded and currently coordinates DESIS (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability). DESIS is a network of design labs (Designmatters/Art Center is one of the labs) based in design schools and design-oriented universities actively involved in promoting and supporting social change.

Design as a Catalyst of Social Resources: How Designers Can Trigger and Support Sustainable Changes
February 16, 2012  5PM
Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles Times Media Center

Click here to download event poster

Just when the Safe Agua Peru class was coming to an end, I was informed that I had been selected to represent Team GiraDora and participate in NCIIA’s Venture lab in Austin, Texas: a 5-day intensive workshop to help budding innovators develop a successful business plan to ensure success of their product. So with barely a chance to catch a breath from the whirlwind term, I packed my bags and was Texas-bound.

Meeting Dan, Penny, and two fellow students from other Safe Agua Peru projects was a bit like déjà vu.  Only 4 months earlier we had been in the same position on our way to Lima, but this time we knew each other and had created a bond from all the long nights and challenges that we encountered over the past 14 weeks. More importantly, we now each had a project with a very real possibility of becoming an actual product. But first, we would need a business plan that would not only ensure that our product could thrive, but more importantly would attract would-be early investors in the potential of our ideas.

In Austin it seemed that everything was on the opposite side of the spectrum compared to our lives and experiences at Art Center. Freezing nights, cheap gasoline and bars advertising $1 beers let us know right away that we were no longer in LA. And with more than 65,000 students calling the University of Texas home, compared to Art Center’s 1200 or so, Austin did seem to be living up to its reputation that “everything is bigger in Texas.” Even at the event our small group of designers seemed exotic and certainly out of place in a room of business students, engineers and software programmers.

“Without the valuable information we learned, and the work we accomplished during the NCIIA Venture lab workshop, we would be far less prepared to take our designs from concepts to products that reach the people we designed them for. This workshop armed us with tools to understand, develop and express the loosely outlined business models we created during the term, including writing strategy maps, uncovering potential pitfalls and learning what types of information investors will expect during a pitch. Before, I didn’t know where to begin to take my product to market, but now after the NCIIA workshop, I have a far clearer strategy, and even some new ideas to extended Balde a Balde into a product line continue new methods for co-creation.”

—Kim Chow, Product Design, Balde a Balde: Safe Agua Peru 

Over the five days, the presenter, James Barlow, started from the absolute basics to not only introduce us to the fundamentals of business strategy but to give each of us the tools to create a business plan – a veritable Gordian knot considering the vast range of people and educational backgrounds in the room.  But true to his word, by the fifth day and after numerous exercises, videos, charts, and a small mountain of post-it notes, each group had created a feasible business plan for their product. The real source of this success was Mr. Barlow’s ability to break down and explain in a simple language what a successful business plan needs, how it can fail, how to identify possibilities and how to prevent pitfalls. Though nothing is guaranteed, I feel that Venture Lab was probably one of the most beneficial things that I could have done in order to see GiraDora reach that next level of realization. I am extremely grateful to have been given this opportunity to expand my understanding of the entire model of business beyond design.

“Art Center’s Designmatters group is such a wonderful and unique community resource.  They utilize their top quality design skills for socially beneficial purposes.  They were able to work with our local bad weather shelter to produce beautiful public service announcement posters to be placed in bus shelters throughout the City.  These posters will help the bad weather shelter to become a more sustainable organization by raising awareness of the crucial service they provide the homeless in Pasadena.”

—William K. Huang , Housing Director,  Pasadena Housing  Department

Project Overview:

In the Fall of 2011, Designmatters partnered with the City of Pasadena and The Friends of the Bad Weather Shelter Program in order to develop an effective campaign to secure sustainable funding for the Pasadena Bad Weather Shelter.  Due to budget restraints and the recent economic downturn, local and federal funds for the shelter were cut considerably.  Rebecca Huang a local high school senior started a creative and doable program that would enable the shelter to continue to provide this humanitarian service for the homeless during the winter months.  If 100 local businesses and/or individuals became “Friends” of the shelter at $600 a year, they could raise enough money to offset the funds lost due to budget cuts.

“I really appreciate Art Center being a part of this effort to continue the Bad Weather Shelter. The bus shelter poster designs are very creative and clever, and express our message beautifully!”

—Rebecca Huang, High School Senior, Founder of Friends of the Bad Weather Shelter Program

Background: The Bad Weather Shelter

In the winter of 1986-1987, nine homeless people died in Los Angeles county, one of the nine was found in Pasadena’s Memorial Park. These tragic deaths prompted the founding of Pasadena’s Bad Weather Shelter, which is run by the Ecumenical Council of Pasadena Area Congregations (ECPAC). There are approximately 1,216 homeless people in the City of Pasadena on any given day, only 20% are in shelters or transitional housing programs, leaving 80% out on the streets, subject to harsh weather conditions. The Pasadena Bad Weather Shelter, a collaborative effort of the City of Pasadena, congregations, local organizations and individuals, has provided shelter, resources and hot, healthy meals to the homeless during the winter months since its inception in 1986. The Ecumenical Council has administered the program since 1988.  During the 2008-2009 winter season, the shelter served  670 unduplicated individuals, including 94 children.  In the past, the $110,000 program was funded through a variety of sources: the City of Pasadena ($60,000), the Federal Government ( $25,000) and donations by congregations and individuals. The City of Pasadena once provided over half of the funding but recent city budget cuts have left the Shelter without it’s main source of financial support.

“Working on the Friends of the Bad Weather Shelter project was a real honor and a very enriching experience.  Design is a powerful tool and being able to use it to help those less fortunate is, I believe, the highest calling for a designer.”

—Patrick Hruby, Illustration Student

Outcomes:

In January of 2012, the City of Pasadena implemented 3 posters art directed by Ann Field and illustrated by alumnus Patrick Hruby, (Illustration, ’10) on 20 bus shelters throughout the city.  Each shelter features 2 posters to run for a minimum of 1 month.  So far, the campaign has raised roughly $15,000 from local businesses and individuals.  This is a great achievement and the Friends of the Bad Weather Shelter continue to work hard to reach their goal of $60,000.

To learn more about Friends of the Bad Weather Shelter or to donate click here.

Acacia Foundation

National Tropical Botanical Gardens

Kauai, Hawaii
Spring 2012

Our “competitive advantage” in this unique field for the Safe Agua Peru project lies in the successful partnerships and outcomes of Safe Agua Chile; our participatory relationship with community stakeholders; and the complementary expertise with Un Techo Innovation team partners.

Safe Agua Peru was supported by a 2011 Sustainable Vision Grant of the National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). The Innovation Center of Un Techo will be instrumental in moving the full-scale working prototypes through the next phase of development leading to implementation.

“How to generate social impact with the right business models at the base of the pyramid is one of the  great innovation challenges today.  The Safe Agua Peru team immersed themselves in a process of co-creation with the families from the Cerro Verde community in Lima.  It is a collaboration that has yielded outcomes that are really astounding.
The students not only addressed–and met–complex needs with low-cost prototype solutions, they also generated a very high level of excitement for the proposed products and systems.  Folks want to see these in the market and are ready to pay for them… this is what I consider true value creation.”

- Andrés Iriondo Socias, Head of Social Innovation Project Management

Design Brief

Work with families living in Peru’s asentamientos (slums) to design and develop solutions, products and services for using, obtaining, containing and carrying water, in order to help break the cycle of poverty.

Design goals included:

• Scalable, sustainable solutions with potential for real world implementation
• Radically affordable products and services for “Base of the Pyramid” families
• Solutions that address specific problems, with both quantitative impacts (illness reduction, water conservation, increased time for self-improvement, opportunities to generate income) and qualitative impacts (sense of dignity)
• Solutions through the sales of: products for individuals & households; products, spaces and services for a small group of families (which can in turn benefit a larger group); services for many communities

Other goals included:

• Developing a sustainable business plan, including sourcing, pricing, marketing
• Identifying potential partners/manufacturers in order to bring the products to market

“The bar was set high due to the outcome of Safe Agua Chile. However, for Peru, we were entrusted with a grant by NCIIA and there are very specific goals for the project, primarily to escalate the products to sell millions at a very low cost.  As a result, the team not only operated as a class, but also in some ways as a consultancy that had deliver quality, quantity and very high results. Having an MBA student as a teaching assistant made a huge impact in this regard. It us articulate our design proposals not only in terms of functionality but also in terms of numbers and business cases.”

- Liliana Becerra, Faculty, Product Design, Un Techo para Chile

About Un Techo Para Mi Pais

A non-profit organization founded in Chile in 1997, run by university students and young professionals who are establishing social inclusion processes through housing solutions to eradicate slums and develop sustainable communities through Chile – and a total of 15 countries in Latin America.

The collaboration with Art Center’s team was coordinated with the Innovation Center at Un Techo led by the Chilean Industrial Designer Julian Ugarte, Director, and his colleagues Askan Straume and Andrés Iriondo.

“Both experiences, in Chile and Peru, were definitely life changing for the students, faculty and the communities we worked with. Seeing how their projects can actually make an impact in people’s lives is very empowering for designers.”

- Liliana Becerra, Faculty, Product Design

Research and Project Development

Day Without Taps

One of the things we take for granted is convenient, unlimited water from plumbing and faucets, yet the families in the community of Cerro Verde who were identified to collaborate on the project have to accommodate their lives to living without running water.

Non-potable water is delivered and filled into 55 gallon barrels at a central location a few times a week. The women of the village must then take buckets to the central location, with many of them walking an hour each way and climbing hundreds of steps to and from their homes situated on hillsides.

To better understand this limitation, design teams conducted an empathy exercise called “A Day Without Taps.” Faculty and students lived for a day using only 3.5 gallons of water, taken either from the nearest hose or from a previously filled container. Students documented the experience in individual written journals.

“Designmatters’ partnership with the Society and Business Lab at USC illustrates the sophistication of the program. Design alone can create amazing and unique solutions.  But in order for those solutions to be implemented and sustainable, they need to be supported by a strong business model.  This practical foundation underlies a program that looks for ideas that are not built for a book or a showcase, but rather for having a real impact on peoples’ lives.”

- Adlai Wertman, Professor of Clinical Management & Organization, Founding Director of the Society & Business Lab, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

Field Research and Methodology Cards

The immersive ten-day field research trip that kicked off the project in Peru allowed the students to work directly with the team of Un Techo Para Mi Pais Peru and families living without access to basic services in Cerro Verde – including running water and sanitation. The focus was on investigating the role that water plays in their everyday lives.

As part of the facilitation students received to gain the confidence and structure to navigate a completely new territory in the field research process, faculty created a tool kit of methodology cards specifically targeting the project objectives.  As for the Safe Agua Chile projects, faculty drew input and inspiration from different design research sources and methodologies, including IDEO’s Method Cards and their Human Centered Design (HCD) tool kit, and also from their our own professional background and experience in the field of anthropology, design research and insights.

The research cards were organized into broad and specific research focus. For the broad topics, rather than focusing only on the functional problems of storing, carrying, using, and re-using water, design teams decided to assess the “big picture” aspects of the problem. Understanding core values, aspirations, and daily life gave us further insight into the problem and helped students bond with families in the community.  In turn, specific focus research topics addressed water-related issues that would directly target project objectives and deliverables.

Driven by the field research, the students formed five teams and began the analysis of field data for the concept/design development phase. Their goal was to create complementary, low-cost prototypes and systems to solve the specific water-related needs identified during the on-site, field research phase.

“It was important for the students in the Safe Agua Peru project to understand the similarities and differences that they would encounter, compared to the Safe Agua Chile project. The living conditions, geography and weather  were much harsher.

Through interaction with the families, and especially the children, the students quickly identified needs for products they could design that would directly benefit the children, whether from a health standpoint (Soap Buddy and VitAmigos) or educational opportunities (Clean+Smart).”

- Penny Herscovitch, Faculty, Environmental Design

Field Testing Prototypes with Families in Cerro Verde

At midterm, several members of the group returned to Cerro Verde to field test the initial prototypes and gain critical feedback directly from the local stakeholders of the project. Feedback was video recorded so that it would be available to all members of the project team to aid in their further concept development.

The Ducha Halo system developed during the Safe Agua Chile project was also retested here to gain additional feedback for conducting further research and prototypes towards final production.

Following midterm, the teams continued designing while developing comprehensive business plans to support the manufacture and distribution of the products, and, began crafting full-scale working prototypes.

“As students, we rarely get the opportunity to conduct such through and in-depth research. The Safe Agua Peru experience in general has been, by far, the most complete and rewarding experience of my academic career.

Before we started, I had questions about how we would find a fresh perspective from the results of Safe Agua Chile. The Chile projects had addressed many of what I assumed would be the most critical problems we would encounter in the (asientamentos). Would we, in Peru, find anything new to tackle? Would our solutions only fill in the gaps of the designs from Chile, and be less poignant as a result? Only a day or two into the research we realized that this was not going to be case.”

- Kim Chow, Student, Product Design

Outcomes

Developing multiple projects that complemented each other was a critical aspect to the holistic goal of improving the quality of life for the families of Cerro Verde as a whole. Throughout the process, the teams of students continually shared their findings with each other towards that goal.

A significant component of the outcomes was the articulation of how the products were envisioned (individually and collectively) to become a sustainable business – whether by or for the community members. The collaboration with the Society and Business Lab at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business was the key to this outcome. Having an MBA candidate as a teaching assistant throughout the term provided the design teams with an invaluable resource to be able to explore and construct preliminary business plans around their innovative design concepts.

Based on the final project results, Designmatters is working in concert with Un Techo to pursue further prototype testing and design refinement, and leverage a network of business relationships, with the ultimate goal of implementing some of the systems and products.

“Penny, KC and I had been part of the Safe Agua Chile project so we had some experience from that, but we also knew that the villages in Peru were far less developed. The people were in a much lower social class, with housing, in many cases, still made up of dirt floors and masonite walls. There would be very significant new challenges for our team to address in Peru. The students proved to be more than up to the task.”

- Dan Gottlieb, Faculty, Environmental Design

Project Solutions

Balde a Balde and Soap Buddy

Student team: Kimberly Chow / Carlos Vides

Balde a Balde (“Bucket to Bucket”) allows for running water from any bucket, to maximize cleanliness while optimizing water use.

(Field testing proved invaluable to the design process. Based on one of the mother’s comments during early prototype testing, the design was modified)

“I can’t control how much water I use.” – Karina

Nearly half of the world lives without access to running water. Balde a Balde (Spanish for “Bucket to Bucket”) is a portable faucet that provides running water from any container, bringing the health benefits and experience of using a tap to families living without running water.

The user attaches Balde a Balde to any container with a universal clip, then begins a continuous flow of water with just a few squeezes of the siphon pump. Users can easily control the exact amount of water they need, with a simple click of the on/off spout or a twist of the valve to regulate flow. Balde a Balde harnesses gravity to bring the dignity of running water to the 3 billion people living without taps.

Soap Buddy is a soap-dispensing bracelet for kids promoting hand washing by making soap more accessible and fun.

“I’d rather have clean kids than clean water.” – Rosa

Handwashing is critical to preventing diarrheal illnesses, and can reduce twice as many water-related deaths as clean drinking water alone.  How can we help make handwashing fun and soap accessible for kids?

Soap Buddy makes handwashing fun by extruding paste soap (common in developing countries) though the bracelet’s faceplate. The interchangeable faceplates become animated when the soap is extruded: Spiderman shoots out a soap web, Hello Kitty’s whiskers grow, soapy boogers ooze out of a nose, or roses grow from a stem. Soap Buddy is always right there to remind kids to wash with soap, even when mom can’t. It’s never been so fun to wash hands!

GiraDora

Student team: Alex Cabunoc / Ji A You

GiraDora is a human-powered washing/spin-dryer a user can sit on that increases the efficiency and improves the experience of hand-washing clothes.

For under $40, GiraDora more than doubles productivity, increases health of women and children, and affords the opportunity to begin breaking the poverty cycle. The user sits on top of the drum-like appliance and pumps a pedal with her foot, which agitates, cleans, rinses, then spins-dries clothes. While providing a more comfortable, ergonomic, and efficient way to clean clothes, GiraDora also affords opportunities to generate income.

Vitamigos

Student team: Thomas Kong / Cora Neil

VitAmigos provides a new fun, playful and interactive experience for moms and kids that brings together water purification and nutrition in a tasty beverage, helping reduce illnesses and medical costs associated with water born disease.

“I want to provide healthier choices and make a better life for my children.” – Christina

For the 1 in 6 people living without access to potable water, purification methods are costly, time-consuming, and often inconsistent. Kids often end up drinking sugary-sodas in place of clean water. Vitamigos combines water purification and nutrition in a tasty beverage, creating a new, fun, playful, and interactive experience for moms and kids living without access to potable water. It is a more convenient and economical alternative to boiling water and healthier than the sugary drinks purchased from the local bodegas. The ultimate goal of Vitamigos is to help reduce the illness and medical costs associated with waterborne disease.

“How important is field research to creating good design? I am positive that we would not have come up with VitAmigos had we not gone to Cerro Verde and had such a connection with the families that hosted us. We thought about how it would impact them at every stage of the design process. Being able to ask for feedback and input during the development phase helped shape the project and hopefully VitAmigos will continue to evolve based on their feedback and partnership as we move forward.”

- Cora Neil, Student, Environmental Design

Caja del Tesoro

Student team: Thomas Kong / Cora Neil

Caja del Tesoro is an innovative vending system to generate supplemental income and provide necessities for the community – any time, day or night.

Caja del Tesoro is a micro business initiative and innovative analog vending machine that has the potential to teach bottom of the pyramid women the skills necessary to earn their way out of poverty.

This stand-alone storefront is a convenient, safe and accessible place to purchase much-needed items for the community anytime, day or night. It is designed with a variety of internal and external features specifically for safe transactions, product adjustability and an entrepreneurship program that can seamlessly integrate into the balance of life and routine for women living at the bottom of the pyramid.

“I signed up for the Peru project because I am passionate about the social impact that can be made through design. I wanted to be part of something other than a concept studio class where, when you complete the assignment, you put it away in the drawer. I thought this project would be a good opportunity for me to become engaged in the process.

Even though the Safe Agua Chile project had been very successful, I didn’t have any preconceived ideas of the outcomes. I knew that the ideas would come as soon as I met the people face to face. And they did. We decided to focus on clean drinking water – the process of just getting a cup of water on the table.”

- Thomas Kong, Student, Product Design

Clean + Smart

Student team: Mariana Prieto / Alexandra Yee

Clean+Smart use the purchase of laundry detergent as the vehicle of distribution of educational earning tools to the BOP (bottom of the pyramid) market in a unique, convenient and affordable way in order to support parents’ aspirations for their child to achieve academic success.

Families living in extreme poverty aspire to provide their children with better educational opportunities, to break the cycle of poverty. Clean+Smart found an opportunity in these families frequent soap purchases to distribute free “ADI” educational toys in each detergent package.

Clean+Smart’s line of ADI educational toys – in Spanish, Arma (Build), Descubre (Discover), and Inspira (Inspire) — consists of three series of toys, each designed towards the development needs of a specific age group. Clean+Smart gives soap companies a competitive edge in the market, increases social responsibility, and most importantly gives poor children a better chance at succeeding in school.

Implementation

Once again, Safe Agua Peru demonstrates the immense potential for responsible design to generate social, cultural and economic change. The six products have obtained provisional patent status, are being further tested, and through Un Techo’s Innovation Center, are being presented to potential manufacturers and distributors

Designmatters has also initiated the Spring studio, Safe Agua DM Development Seminar, which is hosted by the Environmental Design Department under the leadership of faculty members Penny Herscovitch and Dan Gottlieb and will incubate and develop the Safe Agua Peru projects further over the coming months.

Balde a Balde designed by Kim Chow (Product Design) and Carlos Vides (Environmental Design),  is a portable faucet that delivers pipeless running water from any bucket, alleviating many of the health and financial costs of using stagnant water.

GiraDora designed by Alex Cabunoc (Product Design and Jia You (Environmental Design) is a human-powered washer and spin dryer to increase the efficiency and improve the experience of washing clothes by hand.

Vitamigos designed by Cora Neil (Environmental Design) and Thomas Kong (Product Design) creates a new, fun, playful, and interactive experience for moms and kids that combines water purification and nutrition in a tasty beverage.

The Dell Social Innovation Challenge identifies and supports promising young social innovators who dedicate themselves to solving the world’s most pressing problems with their transformative ideas.

Click here to learn more.  The contest runs through May 13, so be sure to register and vote!

Ashoka

Changemakers

Washington, DC
Spring 2012

Our graduation ceremony for the class of December 2011 triggered that reflective mode for me in a wonderful way.   Along with our graduating students, three individuals who have all contributed in special ways to Designmatters were honored that evening.

Dutore Poster by Wendy MacNaughton.

President Buchman led a moving tribute for alumna Wendy MacNaughton (FINE ART 99’), who was recognized with the Outstanding Service Alumni Award.  While some of the iconic images of Wendy’s expansive body of work flashed on the monitors on stage, many mental snapshots of our work and times together kept clicking by.  Among the most memorable, the first time we met, when she visited campus shortly after graduating from Columbia with her MA in social work and brought with her all of these extraordinary, full-size posters from the voting awareness campaign she had conceived for Rwanda’s first democratic elections.

And then, I could hear her screeching with delight all over again, as she had over the phone a few years ago, when I asked her if she would consider flying to Kenya with a couple of week’s notice to become part of our design team for the 2007 World Bank Development Marketplace competition. With Wendy’s fearless inspiration, that design for mobile health delivery project was a competition finalist and would go on to become an important milestone for Designmatters.   And I kept smiling—grateful–to count with Wendy as a friend and as a mentor to our students. “Designers make meaning–and that’s a lot of responsibility,”—is a reminder I hear her profess often.  As an artist, she imparts such a magical sense of urgency through her meaning—making.  And then there is whimsy, and joy, and a deep connection to that elusive humanity in all of us.

DM Fellow Jamie Lopez at PAHO.

Jamie Lopez, who just graduated with a BA as a Graphic Design Major with the Designmatters Concentration, received the Student Leadership Award. Jamie started her speech with the often-referenced quote below from Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking:

“I am not telling you to do the world better, because I don’ think that progress is necessarily part of the package.  I am just telling you to live in it.  Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it.  To look at it.  To try to get the picture.  To live recklessly.   To take chances.  To make your own work and take pride in it.  To seize the moment.  And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave is a fine and private place, but none I think there do embrace.  Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children.  And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can, and good luck at it.”

Joan Didion smiles sketch by Wendy MacNaughton. http://wendymacnaughton.blogspot.com

DM Fellow Jamie Lopez design for PAHO "Faces, Voices and Places" country publications.

While it was touching to hear this stirring piece anew, it was Jaime’s powerful way of linking Didion with her own personal experience of leadership that resonated with me.  A past Designmatters Fellow with the Pan American Health Organization in Washington DC, Jaime embodies that full life force with everything she takes on.  In Jamie’s words, “when you believe in something, you can help but want to make it grow.  And that’s really where progress happens and leaders are created.  That’s how the kind of design that truly changes the world gets created.” Hers is a professional trajectory that will be exciting to track.

DM Fellow Jonathan Jarvis.

MDP alumnus Jonathan Jarvis (Graduate Media Design 09’), was recognized with the Young  Alumni Innovator Award.  Recruited right after his graduation to become one of the founding members of Google’s Creative Lab as one of the “Google 5” (see more at http://creativity-online.com/news/the-google-creative-lab/146084 ) Jonathan gave a grounding commencement address reminding everyone how confusing and exhilarating at once that new professional frontier ahead of you can be.   By then, my mind was simultaneously going back and forth.  Flashing back to Jonathan‘s days as one of the student leads immersed in the field in Suriname to interview youth journalists as part of the Digital Stories project we participated in with UNICEF, and later as a Designmatters Fellow working with the Innovation Team at UNICEF, with whom we are about to start a new collaboration in Uganda with the first Media Design Matters cohort this coming fall.

DM Fellow Jonathan Jarvis' diagram for UNICEF Digital Stories website.

My own doctoral research these days has me delving deep into organizational change and leadership literature.  One of the fundamental definitions of the leadership process puts forth the importance of human relationships as the vehicle by which ultimately success or failure happens.  Leadership as this idea of collective accomplishment—which was so palpable at graduation and through the accomplishments of Wendy, Jaime and Jonathan.

Leadership “emerges out of a dynamic complex environment that always involves others” (Kilburg & Donahue, 2011).  As we get ready for a full 2012 spring term of courses and projects, I am looking forward to that collective leadership journey ahead.

The VentureLab is an intensive, five-day, highly experiential and immersive workshop designed to enhance the success of your venture. Participants develop strong, sustainable business models that create products or services for the benefit of people living in poverty.

The lab will be held at the University of Texas, Austin – January 12-16, 2012

To learn more click here.

David Stairs shares his thoughts about the “Design with the Other 90%: CITIES” Exhibit at the United Nations, where the Safe Agua Chile project was recently showcased.

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The DESIS Network is a constellation of autonomous but interconnected DESIS Labs. Given this system architecture it offers the very unique possibility to integrate local and global points of view and to promote open design programs where a variety of projects converge, tackling complex problems and generating larger scenarios.

For more info on the Desis Exhibition click here.

Click here to read the full magazine online.  Download PDF here.

I’m excited to share about my experiences here at Lily of the Valley, a children’s orphanage in South Africa. Today is my last full day before returning back home (New York City), and there is much to reflect on. I hope that the little I can share now will encourage you to take the journey that I am on. Just to provide a bit of background, I have been living in New York City the past 4-years working as an interaction and user experience designer. I am fortunate to live in such an amazing city where I often meet great people and discover many opportunities. This past June however, I stop working and put everything on pause. I was feeling miserable! I felt burned out physically, emotionally and spiritually. I was living the life I had pictured, but I couldn’t explain what caused it to feel so tiring. I didn’t want to go down a path I didn’t understand or think through.

After 4-months of hanging out and enjoying summer in the city, I decided to submit an application to volunteer at this orphanage I heard about through friends. I can’t say I was excited about going abroad. I didn’t even make plans to stop over in Cape Town or Kruger Park! The plan was to be selfless by paying for my own ticket, raising money for equipment and spend time entirely at the orphanage. The trip was set for 6-weeks which I thought would be more than enough time. But now I realize it wasn’t enough. I’ll share more at the end.

Lily of the Valley started 20-years ago as a hospice for orphaned HIV positive children. Back then, the mortality rate was 97%. Thanks to improving antiretroviral medication, the mortality rate at Lily has dropped to less than 1% giving an HIV positive child the possibility to live as long as anyone else. Most of the Lily kids are HIV positive and were left by parents who couldn’t support them. Others found there way here because of neglect, abuse or abandonment. There are 124 kids (4 over their legal limit) from baby to 21-years old and despite their limitation, sometimes Lily will take a child if the situation is extraordinary. In my first week, I got to see a girl with a learning disability walk into her new home and meet her housemother. It was beautiful.

Lily of the Valley sits on a large land that it owns. Next to Lily is a game reserve called Tala and occasionally you will see wild animals on the compound. There are 19 houses in the children’s village each with its own houseparent, and other houses and offices outside the village for staff and volunteers. Half of the volunteers are high school graduates from around the world who have committed 6-months. Others are professionals who volunteer for a year or longer. Right now there is a speech therapist, a 1st grade teacher and a new sports coach.

Outside of Lily is a town called Mophela made up of many hills covered with circular houses made from dirt or concrete. Along the main road you will see people of all ages standing or walking around doing what seems to be nothing. There is a high unemployment rate in this area. Lily of the Valley has expanded over the years to not only care for orphans, but to care for the community. They provide Mophela their only health clinic, computer center and day care center all free of charge. Lily is partially funded by the government but mainly operates through donations. Sometimes funds are short or the government cuts funding so a farm at Lily was established to offset operational cost by growing and selling tomatoes to local distributors.

When I arrived for the first time, I was surprised by how spacious and beautiful the location is. It’s an amazing environment for the kids to grow up. There is so much space for them to play, explore and rest. I’m also not the type who finds children exciting to be around, but I really enjoy spending time with the Lily kids. Most are really friendly, playful and always looking for attention. Lily is also a Christian organization that practices and encourages a life of faith. Some of the kids choose not to participate in worship services but for many, faith gives them hope and peace.

After my 3rd week, I became more familiar with the older kids referred to as the “up top kids” because they live outside the children’s village on the top part of the compound which is also where I was staying. I was beginning to see the challenges Lily faces with these young adults. They are anxious to be busy, earn money and ultimately be independent. But they lack skills, education, discipline and knowledge! I was allowed to come out for 6-weeks in hopes that I would be working with these kids and teaching them computer skills, but they barely understood how a computer works. I assumed too much!

I started to ask myself what was stopping me from staying for another 6-months or even a year. I learned through this thought process that real sacrifice will cost me something and it won’t be out of convenience. My 6-week itinerary wasn’t long enough. Everyday the volunteers would discuss how some of these kids are going to make it outside. And I guess I felt ridiculous participating in the conversation when I was already set to go home. There is a need for more volunteers with life experiences who are willing to give, give and give. I was thinking to myself “how dare I come here and think I’m doing something good!” I needed to reflect and reevaluate myself.

By the end of this trip, I had realized that I was very passionate about what I was doing at Lily. I want to share as much as I can the things I learned and enjoy in life with the hope that it might inspire someone. I organized a “movie appreciation night” to show the kids some of my favorite films like the Star Wars Trilogy and The Shawshank Redemption. I also helped one of the volunteers organize the “Your Future” presentation to kick off a program that will help some of the younger kids prepare for potential internships and job opportunities. Everyday I would think of an idea for activities, classes, and programs that would be a new experience for the kids.  Unfortunately, Mophela is how they see their world and there are no places nearby for inspiration. There are no bookstores, no movie theaters, no concerts, no restaurants, and no shopping center, all the things I realize I take for granted. When you get to know the up top kids, you feel like they’re living in a box.

South Africa is one of the most developed countries in Africa. It is not the Africa that most people might think of. There are many opportunities to get a great education and discover an enjoyable career. And this is especially true for the Lily kids if more volunteers would be willing to help guide them. Every other week there is wonderful individuals and companies who stop by to visit the kids and I honestly feel that the kids have become spoiled. They grow up having all their basic needs met, but with over a hundred kids and a few long term volunteers, there are hardly enough help to teach and discipline them to reach their fullest potential. And this is the side of an orphanage I didn’t think about. Short-term volunteers with great intentions actually do very little to help. However it did give me an opportunity to see my own potential.

I’m excited to say that I have decided to fly home and get my VISA. These older kids are the future of Lily of the Valley and I feel privileged to have an opportunity to be a part of their life. Volunteering at an orphanage was truly a great personal experience and if you have a heart to give, give and give, I would encourage you to come visit!

To learn more  about Lily of the Valley click here.

For more info on how to get involved contact Mariana Prieto at  artcenter.impact@gmail.com

This was their second trip to Lima, following the initial field research trip in August when the entire team (faculty and students) conducted community interviews and preliminary research in the Cerro Verde region, one of Peru’s poorest areas in the mountains of Lima [see the field research teaser here]. The team came back to  Art Center ready to begin the long process of concepting and developing their projects, which are aimed at alleviating the water access challenges of Cerro Verde families.

The focus for Mariana and Erik on this recent trip was to collect key user feedback on the first round of prototypes that have been developed so far in the Peru studio, as well as to test some of the latest prototypes that emerged from the Safe Agua Chile studio.

For additional info on Safe Agua visit the Safe Agua Exhibition page.

Check out more pictures from Erik and Mariana’s trip below.

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January 22, 2011
UCLA
Los Angeles, California

Ashoka, Changemakers
November, 7  2011
by Kristie Wang

Product Design Alumni Jessica Yeh and Narbeh Dereghishian’s award winning Safe Agua, Ducha Halo project is featured in Ashoka’s Changemakers  Idea ExChange blog with other socially innovative products focused on helping people around the world access clean water and use it more efficiently.

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Environmental Design Faculty Dan Gottlieb at the United Nations

Environmental Design faculty Penny Herscovitch and Dan Gottlieb  make up 2/3 of the Safe Agua Research Methodology Cards design team. The dedicated faculty members had this to say about being a part of the Design with the Other 90% exhibit.   “The Cooper-Hewitt’s 2007 Design for the Other 90% exhibit served as a huge inspiration when we were preparing to teach the 2009 Safe Agua Chile class. What an incredible honor for Safe Agua to be showcased in the current Design with the Other 90%: Cities exhibit.  With nearly half a million projected visitors, we hope that the exhibit at the United Nations will inspire current and future change makers from around the world.”

Liliana Becerra (Product Design faculty) is the other 1/3 of the Safe Agua Research Methodology Cards design team.  She too was inspired by the 2007 Cooper-Hewitt exhibit.  Liliana hopes that the Safe Agua exhibit will inspire other designers to take action and focus on making a change with their work. “When I was working for Nokia in 2007, I visited the first edition of Design for the Other 90%. The exhibition made me wonder how could I be part of projects that impact our world and effect real change. A couple years later, I got involved with Designmatters at Art Center and I now am very proud not only to be working and leading these type of projects with an amazing team of people but also to think that our exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt will now inspire other designers around the world to jump on board.”

Dan Gottlieb, Penny Herscovitch, Mariana Amatullo, Stella Hernandez and Liliana Becerra at the Design with the Other 90% Exhibition

Recent Graduate Broadcast Cinema alumna Elizabeth Bayne, whose Safe Agua Documentary will be featured in a corresponding Smithsonian Channel mini-series, was ecstatic to be a part of this great exhibit and to see all the amazing work being presented by other talented designers. “I was very excited to learn about innovations from all over the world being made to address global health and poverty. And it was a special honor to have a project with which I was involved placed alongside that work and know, even as students, that it was on the same professional level.”

Safe Agua is a social innovation collaboration between Designmatters at Art Center College of Design and Chilean NGO Un Techo Para mi Pais (Un Techo). This unique combination of design education, design research, and social entrepreneurship aims to help families in Chile’s campamentos (slums) overcome water poverty.

The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s “Design with the Other 90%: Cities” Exhibition will be on display at the United Nations until January 9, 2012.  Click here to learn more  about Design with the Other 90%.

An update on what transpired at the Winterhouse Second Symposium on Design Education and Social Change.

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Safe Agua is a social innovation collaboration between Designmatters at Art Center College of Design and Chilean NGO Un Techo Para mi Pais (Un Techo). This unique combination of design education, design research, and social entrepreneurship aims to help families in Chile’s campamentos (slums) overcome water poverty.

Click here for more info about Design with the Other 90%

Introduction to Art Center’s Media Design Matters program, a new graduate track in social design that combines communications strategies with field work.

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“This project is important because it touches really close to home. There is such a diversity of people that live in Pasadena; learning more about what these teens have gone through was an emotional and humbling experience for our students.”

—James Meraz, Associate Professor, Environmental Design

Background:

Teenagers need a positive venue for self-expression, a place where they don’t simply escape from their problems, but are encouraged to deal with them through the arts.  Given the chance to channel their negative emotions into positive ones through the canvas, the wall, paper, or a loudspeaker, lives are transformed and youth can not only visualize their potential, they can reach it as well.  The Teen Art Park would give them that chance.

“The number one thing in this project is that it’s not about you, it’s about the teens. You may like something but at the end of the day you have to consider, ‘will it benefit the teens?’  Everything about the space has to be about them and it has to be genuine.”

—Breon Waters II, Student, Team ARTPAS

Beginning in 2010, an emerging need for an innovative arts center for Pasadena and Altadena’s at-risk youth was identified, and through months of conversation between community partners and Art Center, the vision for the Teen Art Park project developed.  The Teen Art Park is envisioned to provide a safe environment for creative expression and human development for underserved teens; it would allow for mentorship toward creative careers, and it would provide a meaningful alternative to gang participation and other potentially destructive behaviors.

The twenty-nine community partners continued meeting and honing their ideas for a modular proposal that could be a magnet for disenfranchised community youth. These organizations included: Flintridge Center; the project initiator, Designmatters; the Armory Center for the Arts; Learning Works!, A Pasadena charter school serving at-risk youth; and Day One.  At TAP (Teen Art Park) the teen artists could:

• Practice their crafts;
• Participate in workshops in a variety of arts, including music, visual arts, design, and performance;
• Use the space for performances and exhibits;
• Develop skill sets transferable to school and the workplace
• Form connections with community resources in the arts.

Throughout the first phase of the Teen Art Park studio in the Spring 2011 term, the students’ conducted human-centered, qualitative research, interviewed community service providers, and held workshops with at-risk Pasadena youth who articulated their hopes for what a Teen Art Park would bring to their communities.  These conversations informed the projects in terms of what the Art Park might look like and include, how it be should configured and how to develop a sense of ownership among the target audience.

The studio’s second phase took place during the Summer 2011 term and kicked off with an event at Onyx Architects in which the students shared their park proposals with local teens and solicited their opinions on their projects’ direction. Based on the feedback from the teens and additional input from the community partner organizations, the students refined their initial designs and went to work constructing full-scale 20’x20’ modular prototypes that would provide a taste of what a Teen Art Park could bring to the community.

“The Art Center students entered the project not only with a fresh sense of energy and a desire to show what could be done, but they also tried really to understand youth culture. They listened to our student’s wants and needs and built on them. And that is often hard to find. We’re so busy growing up as adults that we forget how much youth can teach us.”

—Mikala Rahn, Founder, Learning Works! Charter School Program (LW)/ArtWorks

Design Brief:

This transdisciplinary studio was comprised of small teams working to realize the class’ goal: to design an alternative and positive environment for youth from underserved communities in Pasadena.   Through research, analysis and purposeful design they created proposals for park environments that supported self-expression, fostered creative skills, and reflected new ideas. With sensitivity to the needs of the individual as well as to group dynamics, the students built three dynamic full scale prototypes relevant to both the at-risk teens demographic and the community partners.

“Environmental design is significant to the Teen Art Park project because it deals with creating the conditions necessary for a wide range of people to engage a social issue through art and dialogue, in a community oriented space.”

—Chris Adamick, Faculty, Environmental Design

In their designs, the teams took into account several criteria— many provided to the students directly from the teens themselves— including the desire for the park to be a place for youth to learn from rising talent, that could become their mentors and role models.

Outcomes / Projects:

Team One: TEAM FREESOL

Anycia Lee and Evian Olivares.

Building community between teens was the focus for Team FREESOL’s design. Their belief that “art is social and social is art,” led to an exploration of the connection between teens, their art, their community and their sense of self.   The intersection of all three influenced the design of an art park where street art provided a transformative canvas.

“Street art is all about keeping the soul/spirit of the street, overcoming hardships and not compromising with the money-driven-art-market.”

—Anycia Lee, Team FREESOL

One of Team Freesol’s main goals was to maintain the informal street feel of youth art culture while providing more formal spaces for teens to display their art.

The teams initial design for the park contained areas devoted to individual studios— private, focused places that allow teens to concentrate on their own art—  as well as unsanctioned, unprogrammed areas to give the teens the freedom to explore and create without restraint. Team FREESOL included mural blocks for displaying artwork, a grass field to serve as a public square, an open-air cafe with fire pit and an undulating path that would run the entire length of the park and perform double duty as an art walk— where the talent and individuality of the teens could be showcased— and as a walking path.

Additional programs envisioned included: “the Tunnel,” an educational introduction to the park, a sculpture garden, and “Up and Down” elevated pathways to allow for, and encourage, new perspectives, and would end at personal studios and classrooms where workshops could be held.

FREESOL was also interested in inviting the community to participate in the park, so their original designs called for the street to be activated via the strip of land adjoining the park, Team FREESOL invited the community to participate in the park and the teens to participate in life outside the park, as well inside it.

When the focus of the class shifted from designing a site-specific space to building a full-scale 20’x20’ modular prototype, FREESOL decided that their main focus needed to be creating a safe, welcoming environment where teens could enjoy being themselves and discover ways to turn what they already love doing into a money-making endeavor.  In the end, their site included a basketball hoop, an elevated platform for relaxation and hanging canvases that could be rolled out of the structure, painted on and then removed for display elsewhere.

Team Two: ART PAS.

Adam Patrick Easter Cottingham and Breon Waters II.

The central idea behind ArtPas’ Teen Art Park project was defined as: “A place to chill, a place to be heard, a place to grow.” It was envisioned as a new kind of creative space for teens, one that looked at specific issues “pressing down” on adolescents today: censorship, gangs, and teen pregnancy.  The art park as imagined by ArtPas would serve as both a support structure and second family.

“The Teen Park we envisioned is one that would be a place of transformation, where you could become the best version of who you can possibly be.”

—Adam Patrick Easter Cottingham, Team ArtPas

Team ArtPas’ approach to the project began by posing two critical questions: How do we create a place where people feel they belong?  How can we create an environment where conversations can take place and people will work together?

Research provided some answers regarding the vital benefits of play and the psychological effects of color–teens react more to shocking colors.  The group incorporated research and ideas regarding the role of space to facilitate creativity. What they came away with was a concept for a park that utilized a diversity of physical areas for a broad range of uses: art, performance, and “chill spots,” which are places to unwind and allow for un-programmed time. Another important aspect of the design process was creating a space where the teens felt comfortable and at home.  They wanted the Teen Art Park to be a place that they could call their own.

Shipping containers to create niches were envisioned, as was a central “urban tree” that, acting similarly to the communal “big oak tree” in rural settings, could display art and act as a focal point for meeting, relaxing, thought and storytelling, a billboard jungle  that would provide a giant canvas for artistic expression, an art gallery, a moveable garden, mobile platforms to re-organize space, and privacy screens made of reeds to give respite from the world.

After weighing additional feedback from teens, partners and their instructors—and after adjusting their plans from creating a site-specific structure to a smaller and more mobile modular system—the team designed and built what they called a “miniature urban fun zone,” built around a miniature half-pipe for skateboarding, billboards for spray-painting and a row of lounge chairs for relaxation.

The Teen Art Park, as imagined by Team ArtPas would provide the familiar and welcome the unfamiliar, and be a place where people could step out and grow.

Team Three: TEAM HUB

Seth Baker, Hugh Chuang and Thomas Kong.

The desire to create an organic space that could meet teens wherever they are informed The Hub’s initial explorations. From the very beginning, their project centered around a modular system that could constantly change, much like the teens for whom they were designing.

To create an adaptable park filled with places that teens could choose to either escape to or actively engage with, The Hub took inspiration from D.I.Y. and Lo-Fi culture and envisioned a “cross-over” environment that would fuse natural and man-made elements. Their initial designs for the park called for a green space, a space for artistic expression, a space to present art and unwind, a family area for teen moms to play with their children and, perhaps most importantly for teen development, “undefined spaces.”

“We met with the teens, we’ve learned their names, we’ve built stuff with them. To be able to say that what we’re building is going to be for Carlos or Mike is pretty powerful. This is actually going to be used by kids, not sitting in a gallery for a term. What we’re doing is really going to affect the lives of people we’ve met. That’s crucial.”

—Thomas Kong, Team HUB

Team HUB originally envisioned the park being divided into three sections: the front of the park would be geared towards teens and act as a place for artistic expression; the park’s versatile center, aka “The Grid,” would serve as a place to display art, to unwind and as an area for families and teens to interact, thus serving as a bridge between different demographic groups within the community; and the back of the park would play host to  a family area, including a playground for teen moms and neighborhood children. The plan also held the possibility of a graffiti wall that would serve as a first introduction to art, as well as a way to elicit the teen voice, allowing it to be expressed clearly, freely and with tolerance.

As the parameters for the park shifted and the class switched from conceptualizing a site-specific structure to building a full-scale modular prototype, the team members found themselves needing to distill their project’s ideas down its most critical elements. Once they did this, they realized their most important goal was to give at-risk teens a space where they could defy societal expectations.

To reinforce this concept, The HUB focused on incorporating everyday objects in new and unexpected ways, most dramatically exhibited in its usage of foam swimming pool noodles to create a topography for relaxing, as well as the large cylinders that do quadruple duty as lounge chairs, spray paint storage units, paintable surfaces and a “boom box” of sorts for MP3 players.

Through its use of unexpected materials and objects and its focus on giving teens a space that they can inhabit and take over, the Teen Art Park, as envisioned by The Hub, would allow youth to both express themselves, to relax among their peers, and to re-imagine their possibilities.

“Without partnerships and collaborative endeavors we wouldn’t be able to create the types of programs and projects that truly benefit the community, in this case, teens.  Solid, committed partners, who share a commitment to youth and a belief in the mission, helped move the Teen Art Park toward fruition.”

—Brian Biery, Flintridge Center

“The students have taken what was a notion and turned it into an authentic possibility. That’s enormously exciting. Part of what’s happened here is getting people and groups together that otherwise wouldn’t have any interaction at all. The wild ‘blue sky’ possibilities that are envisioned here have real substance, and they have a real possibility of making a long-term difference for Pasadena.”

—Scott Ward, Executive Director, Armory Center for the Arts

Next Steps:

The modular parks created by the students were displayed at ArtNight Pasadena on October 14, 2011.  The larger Pasadena community had an opportunity to directly engage with the prototypes and to learn more about the overall project. The units are now being transferred to partner institutions, where they will find a permanent home and will become a foundation in the testing and assessment of Teen Art Park’s next phase.

This research trip is continuing as part of their current course work for Design for Development (E/M 105), a Caltech class led by Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Ken Pickar.  Instructor Nathan Allen is the Art Center faculty mentor for the team.

In this repost from the team’s blog, Graduate Industrial Design student Siddharth Vanchinathan gives an earnest account of this recent trip to India.

Being born and brought up in India, naivety would assume that this trip to Kerala would be commonplace and uninteresting for me. It would seem like I would be able to predict situations and conditions and have preconceived notions based on my life experiences growing up in the southern part of the country. Before this trip, I had visited Kerala several times – mostly for family get-togethers, the most frequented places would be the ones where different parts of the family was which was usually not too far from each other. As a result I visited Kochi and it’s neighboring towns during my visits here.

The team arrives in India in good spirits, even after 28 grueling hours of travel.

I tried very hard to rid myself of any preconceptions in preparation for the trip. It was hard, because it meant unlearning all that I had known about Kerala and its culture from first hand experiences. Design education has taught me not to judge quickly but to observe, to uncover and to digest. Kerala seemed to be a hopeless state to me. No major industry, labor problems, strikes and bandhs disrupting productivity every week. Kerala has the highest literacy rate, and that’s what is probably making its people lazy. Being socialist is not a bad thing – but that’s an opinion for another article.

A skilled worker shapes furniture from cane. Cane is imported from eastern states of India or from Malaysia.

Preconceptions also regarding the engineers that outnumbered us from the start. We designers tend to dislike engineers. We believe that they have a very narrow vision of the world and hence of its problems. They tend to be feature-creeps and are always trying to do more with less, even if that is a good thing at times. Being an engineer myself, the source of these preconceptions were internal to a large extent. I was guilty of a lot of the things that I criticize engineers for now in my engineering days.

Vembanad Chemicals in Kottayam Industrial sector manufactures upto 36 tons of fertilizer everyday. They use manual labour to mix the raw materials and then bag the finished mixture.

I am glad to say that a lot of these assumptions I had as listed above have changed drastically over the past few weeks. I have now learned to embrace the socialistic work culture that gives this state its unique identity. I now understand the motivations behind employee camaraderie and how it affects the employer. Another big eye opener was that a lot of the laborers that we met are paid pretty well for the skilled jobs that they are employed for. Some even come from out of state to work here as skilled laborers lured by the promise of a fatter paycheck. Kerala isn’t a hopeless state after all. Most of the middle class own large plots of land that are cultivated with cash crops, the labor force is paid well and the upper class isn’t complaining either. There isn’t as much poverty in this state – education is to be credited for that. In speaking with Prof. Thomas Varghese, I learned the reasons behind why Kerala has such a high literacy rate – the Christian missionaries not only opened churches everywhere, they also opened schools and hospitals and made them available for next to nothing to people who earlier did not have access to them.

Byron and Jasen document the workroom of a local lamp manufacturer in Kottayam.

I have also discovered a new dimension in engineering problem solving. There is an empathic side that I never knew existed. Maybe it was the personalities of the people on the team, or the circumstances that made them that way, but I applaud the empathy with which all the engineering students approached looking for problems. Empathy is the first step for creating something with social value and I am proud to be a part of this group.

To be honest, I was a little skeptical about the process that we would use to go about identifying problems in the community. Being such a large group, I understand that it was difficult to have some revealing conversations with people who could do with an easier life, but that’s another project in another class. I am confident that we have a talented group of people and I am looking forward to working with everyone.

Checkout the team’s project blog to learn more about their research and explorations.

This research trip is continuing as part of their current course work for Design for Development (E/M 105), a Caltech class led by Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Ken Pickar.  Instructor Nathan Allen is the Art Center faculty mentor for the team.

Check their blog for a window into their research and explorations.

Click here to watch the interview.

With an introduction by
Manuel Toscano, Principal, ZAGO, AIGA National Director for Social Engagement

Moderator
Cameron Tonkinwise, Associate Dean for Sustainability, Parsons the New School for Design

And special guest
Christopher Fabian, Tech4Dev, UNICEF

The event is presented by Design for Good, an AIGA initiative and will take place October 19, 2011 at the US Fund for UNICEF.

Click here for details.

View Website

October 26, 2011
Herron School of Art and Design
Indianapolis, Indiana

Introduction by – Manuel Toscano
Moderator – Cameron Tonkinwise
Special guest – Christopher Fabian

Presented by Design for Good, an AIGA initiative
Hosted by the US Fund for UNICEF

View invite here

October 19, 2011
U.S. Fund for UNICEF
New York City, NY

“I wanted our target audience to understand that they need to think about their own health, but I did not want for them to think we were preaching to them. I wanted them to get the message by acquiring more information at every turn, but with more fun and engagement.   Art Center’s students really listened to what I was saying and to what the LAUSD students wanted–and then they made it work. It is more than I could have ever come up with.“

—Tim Kordic, LAUSD – Health Education Programs, HIV/AIDS Prevention Unit, Project Advisor

Background:

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is the largest public school district in California–second only to New York City in the US.

In 1985, the Los Angeles Board of Education approved the development of programs to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS.  Soon after, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began providing funds to develop age-appropriate lessons for students, and to train teachers in strategies for preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases that may be transmitted sexually (STDs.) Additionally, funds are earmarked for the prevention of teenage pregnancy.

LAUSD prides itself on being an in­novator in sexual education across the na­tion.  With support from the CDC, the LAUSD HIV/AIDS Prevention Unit has been focused on targeting HIV/AIDS prevention among its at-risk demographic, leveraging peer-to-peer social networks.

The Prevention Unit also monitors health education programs and health behaviors that put youth at risk for HIV infection; there is an emphasis on high risk populations, like that of LGBTQ youth.  Additionally, the unit maintains an HIV Program Review Panel. Comprised of teachers, students, parents and community partners, the panel meets to review supplemental materials for health classroom use.

The Prevention Unit approached Designmatters with partial grant funding from the CDC,  which it was able to bring to the Project U challenge with a clear goal in mind: preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS through safe sex education and resources dis­seminated among high-risk youth pop­ulations, particularly African Ameri­can and Latino LGBTQ communities between the ages of 14-22.   The grant from was explicitly given to leverage peer-to-peer social networking media, which became a focus of the class’ work.

Design Brief:

In this studio hosted by the Graphic Design Department, students were challenged to create a peer-to-peer awareness campaign to reinvigorate HIV/AIDS prevention efforts and condom use among LA high school students.  The framework of a CDC grant supporting the LAUSD Prevention Unit set the target audience of the project: at risk youth (starting age 14) in the LGBTQ, African-American and Latino populations.

The campaign, called Project U, is based on bottom-up messaging and a mission for action-oriented awareness in teen sexual health practices.   Believing it is imperative for young people to be armed with knowledge and resources to protect their long-term health, the design team set about creating innovative messaging for a high-school demographic, to drive behavior change and healthy sexual habits to last a lifetime.

Research and Development:

The research phase for Project U occurred over six weeks, beginning with a UCLA-led  Teen Leadership Summit in late May, which focused on peer-to-peer sex education messaging for high-school youth and was essential to the students’ understanding of their target audience.

Later, a panel of prominent experts in teen HIV and STD prevention visited the class with a collective body of expertise representing: LAUSD’s HIV/AIDS Prevention Unit, the Risk Reduction Program at LA Children’s Hospital, Sabores Youth Program, Bienestar, Lifeworks Mentoring, a division of the LA Gay and Lesbian Center, Gay-Straight Alliance Network, and UCLA’s Art and Global Health Center.   Their varied perspectives created the opportunity for deeper understanding of key issues.

“Research was absolutely critical to the final outcome.  It manifested in a focused creative brief that was approved by the client before design was initiated.  That, plus having direct contact and feedback with the client, having lectures provided by experts in their field, and attending the amazing teen summit with direct interaction with the teens, all played a vital role in the final success of the project.”

—Tyrone James Drake, Faculty, Graphic Design

The creative brief that was developed early on brought the campaign’s goals into clear focus: create a culture for the “Project U” sexual education brand, generate a strategy for awareness of Project U, and—importantly—drive teen ownership in the campaign in order to keep youth involved in safe sex practices throughout high school and into the future.  Capturing the voice of teens in an honest, authentic, credible and cliché free way was central to these goals; the tone of the campaign had to be dynamic and innovative, and yet support the key objective to impart palatable sexual health education to teens.

The campaign’s central concept is built around messaging of “Sex 101″ with its central theme of “The Rules: A Beginners Guide to Sex.” The goal of the “rules” was to be real and trustworthy; actual statements by youth from the Teen Summit were incorporated into them.  The tagline, Go Learn, was used throughout the campaign materials to urge the target demographic to find out information before engaging in sexual practice, and to be educated about actions that will affect their long term health.

Design development focused on a character-based campaign.  Several animated characters provided the main voice of the campaign, and were designed to be both visually appealing and gender-neutral.

Outcomes / Projects:

The class split up into three design teams with three areas of focus that ultimately form an integrated campaign with print-based applications, screen-based applications, and environmental/ambient applications.

PRINT-BASED APPLICATIONS:

Often the first opportunity to introduce the brand, this team’s print based efforts were focused on posters, print ads, and zines with the goal of spreading the name and logo of Project U.

Posters were designed for various contexts, from billboards, to bus stop ads, to temporary wall “graffiti” using wheatpasting techniques.  In order to make the campaign flexible and achieve greater longevity, some posters contained the “rules,” while others focused on introducing the characters.

“It was good way to get a real feel of how it is to work as a team and it helped me not just seeing the graphics design perspective, but the advertising and product perspective, too.  Additionally, the scale of this project was rewarding; it was going out in the real world, it was going out into the community and it was going to impact the community.”

—Ted Sin, Graphic Design Student

Zines were conceived to be almost pocket sized, something for teens to grab and keep.  Always different and not too serious, each zine would be focused around a theme.  Every issue introduces five new “rules” intended to drive teens to the Project U website to learn more; a center spread will carry an informative and thought-provoking article.  Additionally, each zine  is anticipated to contain a fold-out poster, sized to fit into school lockers; the last spread of the zine featuring games and the Project U street team’s schedule of school visits.

SCREEN-BASED APPLICATIONS:

This team was charged with creating a website that could feature a significant body of text on sexual health, within a dynamic design that would maximize approachability and return visits.   The team also created an interactive email newsletter on the website that would link to current information and recent updates about Project U, and be an especially timely resource for website users.

In addition, smart phone applications for the Project U brand were developed by this team.  For both applications, creating an ongoing relationship with the teens was vital, so the design team afforded users the ability to personalize the Project U characters as personal avatars and to create a pages and networks on Facebook and other social media sites.

The smart phone app was designed to be an all-in-one resource; it is comprised of four parts:

1. Condom finder. (with GPS access).

2. Clinic finder (with GPS access).

3. Picture uploader.

4.  Character builder.

3D SPATIAL + AMBIENT/APPLICATIONS

For this aspect of the Project U brand, the team’s challenge was to develop compelling and fun ways to extend the messaging through grassroots marketing and the outdoor environment.

From stickers in different shapes and sizes, to buttons and pins that are informative and edgy, the empowerment extensions provide “take aways” for the students to use.  Additional designs by the team centered around condom packaging; one contained a return registration card for the Project U newsletter, another, a condom keychain that would hang on a backpack, and would reveal whether the owner did, or did not, have a condom; another doubled as a holder for student ID cards.

“Research was essential because we were trying to speak to a demographic hard to reach.  It was important for us to understand their lives; their senses of humor, what catches their attention and research helped us do that. “

—Heather Grates, Graphic Design Student

In the context of the outdoor environment, the goal was to create a more casual, peer-to-peer connection, so designs were developed for large-scale wheat-paste posters and outdoor stencils.  These brand extensions were envisioned as a way to bring the campaign out of the school and onto the street team vans.

T-shirts were also designed to reinforce brand recognition by featuring the logo, the characters, the “rules,” or various “updatable” promotions of Project U messaging.

Lastly, the environmental team envisioned a life-sized character that would interact directly with teens, and serve as a physical manifestation of the entire campaign.  Made in 2D or 3D, the character would also serve a practical use as a condom dispenser.

Next Steps for Implementation

The strategy the design team devised for the Project U campaign is to arm youth with information they will be excited to own and share.  The ultimate goal is to empower teens as active participants in their own sexual health, to urge them to embrace the brand of Project U and to become foot soldiers in spreading the lifesaving messages of the campaign.

Designmatters is currently working the LAUSD Prevention Unit to coordinate the implementation phase of the Project U campaign, beginning with a Fall 2011 partial roll-out in h 5-6 high schools across Los Angeles.  In February 2012, the LAUSD Health Education Programs, HIV/AIDS Prevention Unit will implement full pilot rollout of the campaign across 30 schools, and by the fall of 2012, they plan to disseminate the Project U campaign in all high schools across the district.

“I’ll admit, I used to eat food based on its taste alone. This project has opened my eyes to good food as a priority as well as a holistic opportunity.”

—Joy Lin, Environmental Design Student

Background

As the U.S. wages battle against an obesity epidemic and rising health care costs, there is an increased interest in the way nutrition labels play a role in our daily lives, in particular how they guide our consumption of food. In the past 20 years alone, obesity rates rose dramatically in the U.S., and in many states nearly a third of adults are now obese.  The written information on nutrition labels is often too small, making it hard to read, and often the type of metrics provided aren’t very useful for consumers hoping to make educated and healthy decisions about what to eat.

Design Brief

To address this major public health challenge, UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism’s News21 program and GOOD Magazine launched a contest this past summer inviting the public to redesign the nutrition facts label. To coincide with this contest, they also formed a partnership with Art Center’s Designmatters Department to create a studio in which students would tackle the issue of food labels within a larger context—taking into account branding, some of the social issues surrounding the packaging of food (e.g. carbon footprint, BPA levels, etc.), as well as the grocery store environment and food buying experience.

“This is a very compelling and timely subject. As with any new subject a design team looks into solving, communicating or developing, you find out so much during the research and design process that the true gems of knowledge that lie deeper come from some great individual experiences that add to the team’s group knowledge.”

—Gerardo Herrera, Graphic Design Faculty

Research and Project Development

Early on during the term, the four students decided to focus their energies on rethinking the private label brands of four high-impact supermarket chains—Walmart, Ralph’s, Target and Vons. These chains already have a robust private label business, and so the students believed that changes to their food labels could dramatically change they way Americans consume food.  To narrow their focus, each student chose a different food category to explore: breakfast, vegetables, meat and seafood.

As faculty member Gerardo Herrera explained, the biggest challenge was taking the subject of rethinking the food label and expanding it to rethinking the complete package and in-store experience at retail. “The students had multiple elements to deal with regarding packaging, identity, naming, Point of Purchase display, Planograms, innovative materials and a proposed vision for a national supermarket chain that could provide a roadmap for change,” he said. “This was much more encompassing than just developing a new nutrition facts label. The label had to be supported by all touch points and designed experiences, which made this a bit more challenging.”

During the research phase, the students conducted an audit of their chosen supermarket and food group while doing more general consumer and packaging research. Shirleen Lavalais, for example, discovered that 17 percent of the American diet comes out of cans. She also learned that the canning process of vegetables contains no preservatives and retains more nutrients than she imagined. Armed with this information, she decided to focus her efforts on rebranding canned vegetables for Ralph’s. Jim Bogenrief, meanwhile, who had chosen to rebrand fresh meat for Target, learned about a new regulation that beginning January 1, 2012, USDA Food Safety will put nutrition information on 40 of the most popular cuts of meat and poultry.

The class also discovered a variety of misleading information on current food labels, including inconsistent information and icons, a lack of information on unhealthy foods, and unclear percentages in relation to relative values. Each sought to address these discrepancies through their design explorations of nutrition labels.

Outcomes / Projects

The students presented their design solutions and prototypes during the final critique, creating private label brands to inspire better nutrition literacy. While their designs and packaging solutions were created for certain food groups, all agreed that these could be applied to different food categories as well.

“Walton’s” by Kenji Huang

Kenji Huang developed a new breakfast brand for Walmart called Walton’s, with the tag line “Living Better Made Easy.” Huang explained that Walmart’s current private label brand, Great Value, “looks like hospital food,” and that his new system aimed to be more inviting. His logo consisted of two interlocking circles, representing the concept of dusk to dawn and “where value and quality meet.” Explained Huang, “I was inspired by morning and breakfast as the most important meal of the day, and the new Walton’s brand infuses my design philosophy of purity, discovery, joy and empowerment.”

The front of the package and the nutrition label are part of its brand identity, and Huang also conceived of a more friendly and accessible nutrition quick facts system on the side or back of the package, where he also visually represented a serving size. The photography on the package is straightforward yet attractive, and the ergonomic design of the milk carton is contoured to fit into hands.

“Coastal Catch” by Joy Lin

Joy Lin developed the private label brand, “Coastal Catch” for the supermarket Vons to bring attention to the nutritional and sustainable aspects of consuming seafood. Her elegant logo includes a typographic mark representing life on the sea—“a fishtail, an ocean wave or the casting of a fishing net,” explained Lin.

Her main goal was to capture the essence and vitality of oceanic fishing while encouraging holistic, informed decisions about the seafood consumers buy and eat. “What exactly is in my seafood?” was the driving question that guided Lin’s design, which features an easy-to-read bar graph listing four key nutrients on the front of the trapezoidal package for easy stacking (calories, saturated fat, sugar and sodium); transparent packaging to reveal the freshness of the fish/seafood inside; color-coded package labels that reveal the geographic source of the fish/seafood (wild caught is blue, farmed is red), and even the stamp/signature of the individual fisherman; and a scoring system that rates the seafood/fish on sustainability and toxicity. She also created an area to list health benefits and any potential concerns of a specific seafood on the front of the packaging.

“Corner to Corner” by Shirleen Lavalais

Shirleen Lavalais developed a private label brand of canned vegetables and bottled juices for Ralph’s supermarket, a store that has been a staple in California for 125 years. She chose the name “Corner to Corner” to give the brand a warm and trustworthy tone, and to communicate that Ralph’s values local produce and high-quality ingredients for its canned goods. To highlight the supermarket’s long history, Lavalais developed a design with a nostalgic quality referencing classic Americana—the typeface and ornamental illustrations are examples of this approach—while making sure the brand would still appeal to today’s health-conscious customers who long for easily-digestible nutritional information. Based on market research she conducted earlier in the term, Lavalais opted to simplify the amount of nutritional information on the can: On the front, for example, she lists vitamins, calories and sodium per serving. The back labels list the nutrition facts in an easy-to-read language and typographic choice.

One of Lavalais’ main goals was to make the presentation of canned vegetables look more high-end and to dispel the notion that canned vegetables are inferior to frozen or even fresh produce. “I learned that the vegetables used for canning are harvested at peak ripeness, and that the canning process preserves much of the nutrients,” she said. The cans feature enticing photographs of the specific vegetable, paying homage to artists like Wayne Thiebaud and Edward Weston, and include short and colorful historical descriptions of the food item.  In addition, she exposed part of the aluminum can  to highlight the beauty of the can and to provide a dramatic contrast to the label. In addition to applying her design to cans, Lavalais also created bottled juices and vegetable snack bags. She said the studio experience was an excellent experience to create design elements that “can evolve the way we perceive and select food.”

“Rural Road” by Jim Bogenrief

Jim Bogenrief created a private label brand for Target that focused on the highly scrutinized meat industry. In his youth, Bogenrief was a member of the 4-H organization and he grew up on a ranch. For this project, he wanted to educate the consumer about the health benefits of eating all-natural, hormone-free meat in lieu of processed foods. With “Rural Road,” he created a new graphic language and packaging forms that took advantage of the strategic use of nutritional information. One of the most striking aspects of his design appears on the front of the package, where there’s a transparent die cut in the shape of the animal against a black background, emphasizing to consumers that they are in fact eating an animal and putting some of the truth back into the consumption of meat. “There are no secrets here,” said Bogenrief. He also draws an outline around the section of the animal that represents the cut of meat. His design references a ribbon, harking back to his 4-H days.

Each package prominently emphasizes a key nutritional fact about a particular cut of meat on the front of the package (e.g., the package containing top sirloin boasts 10 amino acids; a pork chop has 38 percent of the daily value of zinc). Other important nutritional information is organized into a fan-like graph on the front of the package. Knowing that part of the public health problem in this country is due to an unclear understanding of serving size, Bogenrief also created a silhouette or ruler-like measurement on the back of each package to show a particular serving size. Finally, realizing that a cut of meat is a “blank palette” for consumers, Bogenrief also included recipes on the front label to encourage consumers to think about the whole meal and its preparation.

An article about recent Art Center Alumni Narbeh Dereghishian and Jessica Yeh’s award winning Ducha Halo portable shower system, which was an outcome of the Designmatters Safe Agua Chile Project in partnership with the Innovation Center, Un Techo Para mi Pais.

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Read more here

I am just back from Lima and time in the field with the extraordinary team of students and faculty who are leading the Safe Agua Peru project.

Safe Agua Peru marks our second collaboration with the Innovation Center of Un Techo Para Mi Pais and builds upon the lessons we have learned working together in Chile in 2009.     At the helm of this transdisicplinary studio are once again Dan Gottlieb and Penny Herscovitch (Environmental Design) and Liliana Becerra (Product Design).   Julka Almquist from our Humanities and Design Sciences Department rounds up the faculty team.

Art Center students talk with community members as water truck arrives

With the support of an NCIIA Sustainable Vision Grant, the team is charged to delve deep into the systemic issues around water poverty that affect this community of about 85 families who are served by Un Techo Para Mi Pais Peru in Cerro Verde, Pamplona Alto, in the district of San Juan de Miraflores.   We are anticipating that the rigorous and participatory research framework of the studio, coupled with privileged access to the community thanks to Techo will yield outcomes that can make a lasting impact.

KC Cho (product design) helps with water chores

Askan Straume (Un Techo Para Mi Pais) and Dan Gottlieb (Environmental Design, Faculty) help residents make chicken soup

The complexity we are confronting is humbling.  As we started to learn from our meetings last week with the Mayor of Lima, and conversations with other government officials and leading experts at the field office of the Pan American Health Organization, the scale of the problem surrounding water distribution and sanitation services in Lima is daunting with clearly no comprehensive short-term solutions in sight.  While the problem is also part and parcel of a universally recognized global water crisis with scary stats, it somehow takes a new urgency and specificity for us when we meet Luz and Karina, the community leaders of Cerro Verde and their families.   For them, as for the communities of thousands who reside perched high in the misty hills of the “cinturón urbano of Lima”  (the urban beltway of the city) a lack of effective policy and reliable infrastructure translates into aggravated economic hardship and public health hazards.  On average, this community pays seven times more than someone in the downtown area for water that has to be boiled before consumption and is delivered by a network of highly unreliable small scale providers who drive their water trucks up the windy roads of Cerro Verde.

Community Leader Luz Ramos Osores

There are many mental snapshots that stay with me from my abbreviated time in the field–students helping prepare the delicious sopa de gallina, the chicken soup that was cooked on an open fire on our first day, children playing with bubble wands and crayons, my struggling to keep a mischievous band of little boys to take turns with my photo camera at snapping pictures, our teams sharing in on getting routine domestic and water chores done, quiet conversations happening here and there.  All amount to a string of experiences from just one morning that generates vivid emotions upon recall.

And so I am reminded once again about the intangible learning that occurs in these social impact design projects defined by deep immersion–the humanity they elicit from each of us.  I keep thinking we are moving the needle so to speak in how we are stretching our educational models here at the college, how we continue to be bold in our resolve, and also a bit fearless about what we want to set out to accomplish as creatives, as educators, as people.

Safe Agua Peru is off to a beautiful start.   You can follow the team on the project blog at safeagua.org.

]]> http://www.designmattersatartcenter.org/2011/09/07/cerro-verde/feed/ 0 http://www.designmattersatartcenter.org/reco/designmatters-unicef-and-frog-featured-panelists-at-socap11/ http://www.designmattersatartcenter.org/reco/designmatters-unicef-and-frog-featured-panelists-at-socap11/#comments Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:41:37 +0000 designmatters http://www.designmattersatartcenter.org/?post_type=recognitions&p=3486 Designmatters own Mariana Amatullo will be featured along side esteemed colleagues; Rajesh Anandan – US Fund for UNICEF,  Erica Kochi – UNICEF Tech Innovation, and Robert Fabricant – Frog.  They will be holding a panel at SOCAP11 entitled…

Things that Work: Amplifying Impact Through Effective Partnership

Fostering effective and efficient innovation requires best-in class thinking and practices.  Drawing on the experience, methods and resources of partners from the design, academic and private sector, UNICEF has been able to build on open-source technology platforms to co-create solutions that amplify impact.  Using successfully piloted projects as examples, this panel will  explore how skill sets, insights and a contextual understanding of the challenges help cross-sector teams work together to design for development.

Read more here

Click here to read more.

Art Center Product Design Faculty Liliana Becerra with Paul Polak of D-Rev

About a month ago I was offered the opportunity to attend and participate in the first Sustainable Vision Teaching Lab hosted and organized by NCIIA – National Collegiate of Inventors and Innovators Alliance – in Colorado State University; together with my colleague Nathan Allen, both of us Faculty of the Product and Grad ID Departments at Art Center College of Design.

As a general background NCIIA is an alliance of faculty and students working to advance the teaching of invention and innovation in American higher education. This practice is highly and mostly rooted in focused innovations seeking to benefit under-resourced populations through scalable solutions. NCIIA has awarded several grants to Art Center College of Design during recent years to support the creation and incubation of academic projects on design for social impact hosted by Designmatters, the social impact department of the College.

I had had the opportunity to meet some of the people from NCIIA earlier on when I first came to “Open Minds” the NCIIA annual conference in Washington D.C on March 2011 to participate on a panel about lessons learned from two of my recent classes “Creating Social Value Through Design” in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala and “Safe Agua” in Santiago, Chile. Already during my first interactions with NCIIA members, I realized that most of them had an engineering background while design professionals rather few.

When I first arrived to the Sustainable Vision Teaching Lab on June 2011, it was slightly intimidating and humbling to suddenly realize I was part of a group of people who by profession call themselves inventors and innovators, after all, the word innovation alone has been overused and misinterpreted during the last decade, losing a lot of validity and excitement.

Paul Polak introduced the conference by explaining his latest project called “D-Rev” a non-profit organization seeking “to create a design revolution by enlisting the best designers in the world to develop products and ideas that will benefit the 90% of the people on earth who are poor, in order to help them earn their way out of poverty” and then he emphasized to all of us attending the conference “that is why you all are here”.

With such high expectations I decided to focus on listening and learning as much as possible from my fellow professors from other universities, and the conference organizers and mentors Amy Smith, Paul Hudnut and Paul Polak. I asked as many questions as I could and organized all my thoughts and learning’s into a matrix targeting the development of the academic plan for “Safe Agua Peru” an up and coming TDS class Designmatters is launching this fall with the Environmental and Product Design Departments, in partnership with Un Techo Para Mi Pais. The project is a recipient of an NCIIA Sustainable Vision Grant.

From a design perspective, it was interesting to be immersed in the creative process typical of engineering programs where a rather complex terminology prevails. All projects for social enterprise that were presented included very specific and clear technologies with their corresponding roll out business plans, companies types, customers, supply chains, investors, goals for ROI (Return on Investment) and for 3BL (Triple Bottom Line).

Art Center Product Design Faculty Nathan Allen at work

The main focus of the academic projects about design for social impact I have been working on so far, revolves around using design as a powerful tool to change people’s lives while developing character and embedding a sense of urgency into our young design students. Most of our field research processes are based on observation, collaboration, learning by doing and establishing great levels of empathy and trust with those who we are designing with. Beyond these goals, we would normally rely on the support of local NGOs to create business and rollout plans for our projects, which, so far have been very successful.

Looking at things from both sides of the spectrum, as much as I believe that current projects and processes focused on design for social impact could and should benefit from setting specific business goals, I also think that having a focus only on new technologies and the engineering behind them should not be the ultimate goal for social entrepreneurship and change. It is crucial to look beyond scalability, business, profit and technical solutions and ask ourselves first the question: in the long term, what are we empowering people to accomplish?

At the end of the conference, I had a chance to chat with Paul Polak for about two minutes. Other than telling him how inspired I was by his words and his work; I gave him a copy of our Safe Agua book. I told him about the focus of our project, which was to create solutions for carrying, storing and using water for people who live in areas with no access for running water in the slums of Santiago, Chile. As he listened to my story with a great smile in his face, quietly looking through the pages of the book and paying close attention to the six interconnected projects that resulted as an outcome; I was wondering, what was going through his mind. Then, when my two minutes were up, he looked at me still smiling and finally said: “what you are doing is much more difficult and complex than the projects I usually do, this is very inspiring. Thank you.”

After my brief conversation with Paul Polak – and a quick picture of course – I left the conference thinking that in the end we were are all inspiring and learning from each other. We are actually in the right place at the right time; a space where brilliant minds collide to create intersections of innovation than can actually change the world. Although I still feel humbled about the task ahead, I strongly feel that working in cross-disciplinary teams with a mix of skills and backgrounds is a must in order to move forward and of course, I am ready for the challenge of being part of the “Design Revolution” project.

The exhibition was designed to showcase the outcomes of the project as well as a The Safe Agua documentary Film and The Harry Gota Story created for the initiative.

The exhibition’s first venue coincided with presentations of the project at the UN Pavilion during the Shanghai World Expo in fall 2010 and at the Cumulus Shanghai Conference 2010. Subsequent venues have included the Royal College of Art, London for the INCLUDE 2011 Conference , April 2011,  the atrium of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC, June 2011 and the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s “Design with the Other 90%: Cities” Exhibition at the United Nations, October 15, 2011 – January 9, 2012.

About the Safe Agua Project: Design Strategy and Impact

Safe Agua provides a case study in a new and necessary approach to the critical importance of empathy-driven methodologies in design education for social impact, and documents the unfolding evolution of design and design education. Safe Agua makes a powerful case for specific, direct impacts through a human-centered, collaborative approach to problem solving.

Viewed as an example for the execution of socially driven design principles, it demonstrates the far-reaching potential for specifically tailored design research methodologies, collaborative processes, and creative solutions to achieve further relevant successes globally.

As a template for action, Safe Agua evinces the role of designers as potential change agents for people living in poverty, or otherwise suffering from seemingly intractable problems that have yet to be addressed by the power of design.

“Designing with the Safe Agua Team has been the most influential project I’ve been involved with in the design field. I don’t believe there is anything more rewarding in design then using our skills and creativity to make an impact in the lives of the less fortunate.”  Ramón Coronado

From the perspective of the students experience, Safe Agua helped students to see design in a totally different new light, supported by a context of real world challenges and demonstrated that small incremental solutions based on innovative thinking, re-purposing existing materials and maximizing resources can bring about exponential impact in society.

Take a stroll through the Safe Agua London Exhibit

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September 30, 2011
Hyatt Regency Downtown
Denver, Colorado

Sustainability is more often than not linked to the responsible use of our planets resources to assure its availability for future generations. As true as this is, sustainability can also be applied to our own lives. As designers, we can “burn out” when we drain our creative resources but we can prevent this by refreshing and recharging ourselves from time to time.

While we are in school the opportunity to go out and research different cultures in a new, exciting and relaxed setting is limited, to say the least. Because of this, Eco Council has taken the initiative to plan a research trip to explore a new country in a different and exciting way. This last Spring Eco Council travelled for ten days to Colombia to remove ourselves from our comfortable surroundings and to work on a design project at an organic mango plantation in Anapoima, Colombia (a small town located 2 hours outside of Bogota, Colombia).

Our goal was to come up with one design project during our time there while doing physical work at the farm and learning the inner workings of an organic plantation in Latin America.

After days of wielding a pickax, teak planting, mud fishing, milking, horseback riding and learning all there is to know about mango trees, we agreed the most valuable experience was working together with the farm workers through every step of the design process.

This allowed us to develop not only one, but two design projects that are both in the process of implementation. One of them is a counting system that allows the farm to know how many good or bad mangos are produced during harvest from each individual tree. This allows plantations to focus their work efforts on the trees that need it the most. We also designed two branding irons, which will be used to mark the different bull breeds that are raised at the farm.

We immensely enjoyed disconnecting completely from the rest of the world and living only the moment where the farthest thought of the future was “what’s for lunch today?” This allowed us to use other sources of inspiration and reconnect with ourselves and with one another.

Ultimately, we implemented two design projects, but more importantly, we returned with an experience that expanded our vision of field research while uniting people from across many borders, in a positive and enjoyable learning environment.

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September 12, 2011
Mayo Clinic: Center for Innovation
Rochester, Minnesota

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September 6-9, 2011
Fort Mason Center
San Francisco, CA

Alumni Spotlight

Designmatters partners with Art Center Alumni on an ongoing basis. This section is updated regularly with stories and highlights of their engagement. Visit often, and for more information, contact the Alumni Department.

Product Design alumnus William Tang (’10) designed Hinge, a compact and versatile stand for the iPad. He introduces his product in the excerpt below:

Hinge for iPad hugs the iPad to hold it at the perfect angle—from a comfortable typing position on your lap, to any upright position for watching movies or a FaceTime conversation. It also folds compactly so you can take it wherever you go. Going beyond form and function, Hinge for iPad is responsibly designed, using recycled and renewable materials and will be made domestically, right here in Los Angeles.

Hinge for iPad embodies key principles of responsible design through material choice and local manufacturing. If launched successfully, and looking beyond the product itself, I hope to use Hinge for iPad as the revenue-generating seed for future designs that directly address social issues.

For more information, please visit William Tang’s site here.

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August 14-16
The Hotchkiss School
Lakeville, Connecticut

To learn more click here.  Make sure you spread the word by tweeting and sharing with your friends.

The James Lemont Fogg Memorial Library at Art Center College of Design has created a library source guide to support the Designmatters Concentration, focusing on the four core themes: Sustainable Development, Global Health, Public Policy and Social Entrepreneurship.

The resource guide can be accessed directly here (or though the Designmatters Resource page below).

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is hosting an exhibit on innovative and affordable designs to provide safe water, internet solutions and entrepreneurship opportunities for people living in poverty.  Six different safe water solutions developed by Designmatters at the Art Center College of Design in partnership with the Innovation Center of Un Techo Para Mi Pais will be on display.

The exhibit will be in Washington, DC from June 6-10 at the atrium of the IDB’s headquarters.

Read Press Release

Introduction to Art Center’s Designmatters department as the first design institution to be declared a partner of United Nations as a NGO and its recent projects, including Mpala, Es Tiempo and Safe Agua.

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by Carl Kozlowski
April 2011

Art Center exhibit focuses on America’s largest group of people living with HIV/AIDS.

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Brilliant minds and their game changing innovations gathered at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History on Saturday March 26th.

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by Ernest Beck
March 2011

An article about the fast growing trend of social design education at Art Center and other top design schools.

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Narbeh Dereghishian (Product Design) and Jessica Yeh (Environmental Design) are one of only 15 student teams selected by the NCIIA (National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance) to showcase their work at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. on March 26, as well as take part in an exciting video competition. The exhibition will be open to the public on Saturday from 10am – 2pm.

Narbeh and Jessica’s video entry  “Safe Agua – Ducha Halo,” is a short film documenting the process of developing an affordable and pressurized shower solution built for the developing world.  The Ducha Halo video captures the outcome of the Safe Agua Designmatters project  in collaboration with the Innovation Center of Un Techo Para Mi Pais.   Please support them by casting your vote on the Inventors Digest Website. The Competition ends March 14 so vote soon and often.

Interview with Environmental Design student Stephanie Rose Stalker,  designer of  SAFE AGUA community laundry center Mila.

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Designmatters Safe Agua Project is featured in the French Le Monde.

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An article on the products designed by students to help those in need.

The Safe Agua project is profiled by ICSID in the council’s newsletter.

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Mariana Amatullo interviews with Core77 regarding Designmatters Concentration.

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An article updates Camel Mobile Clinic filed-testing in Kenya and Ethiopia.

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An article that updates Camel Mobile Clinic filed-testing in Kenya and Ethiopia.

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A campaign to protect the health of Southern California’s Latinas overturns conventional assumptions of why these women fail to seek preventive measures.

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Solar Powered Camel Clinics Deliver Vaccines to Kenya
Wired UK/News Culture
By Michael Conroy

Using Camels to Deliver Health Care in Rural Africa
Toronto Star, Canada
By Craig and Marc Kielburger
*Also republished in the Huffington Post

Solar Powered Camel
Greenz Magazine, Japan
By Yukiko Matsuoka

Interview to the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio and its week-end design magazine edition that featured the project.

Article introduces the outcomes of Designmatters “Safe Agua Chile” project.

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An article about global summit activities and reports focused on sustainability and education, which was held by Designers Accord.

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Mariana Amatullo reports on the Aspen Design Summit.

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Ashoka Tech blog profiles Safe Agua Chile Project and student process with weekly series.

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Gota a gota: La lucha por el agua en un campamento
La Tercera Newspaper, Chile
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U.S. Design School Teams Up with ‘Un Techo Para Chile’
The Santiago Times, Chile
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Mariana Amatullo Directora Designmatters
El Diario Diseno, Chile
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Escuela que disena Ferraris alivia la falta de agua en campamentos
El Mercurio Newspaper, Chile
By Lorena Guzman H.
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Six Solutions for Saving Water and Saving Lives
Fast Company
By Alissa Walker
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Article about the IMI porject and the Designmatters/Caltech Collaboration in the class “Engineering Design of Products for the Developing World.”

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The Designmatters program is highlighted as one of the best philanthropy programs in design education.

An interview with Mariana Amatullo regarding “The Los Angeles Earthquake: Get Ready” project.

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A review of The LA Earthquake Sourcebook, which was released in collaboration with “The Great Southern California ShakeOut.”

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Art Center is referenced here in this article about “The L.A. Earthquake Sourcebook.”

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This article describes the poster exhibition “Images from Human Rights: Student Voices” at Pasadena’s Central Library,  designed by sixteen Art Center students.

Art Center is featured in this article about Designmatters and “The L.A. Earthquake: Get Ready” project.

This article features Art Center’s “Human Rights: Stuent Voices” exhibit at the Pasadena Central Library.

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Art Center’s exhibit “Human Rights: Student Voices” was featured in the Pasadena Weekly.

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Mariana Amatullo an Art Center are mentioned in this article about the Southern California Shakeout.

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This article references Designmatters’ role in organizing the “Get Ready Rally.”

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This post showcases the earthquake response game “Aftershock.”

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This article places Aftershock within the context of the larger design initiative “The Los Angeles Earthquake: Get ready.”

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Mariana Amatullo outlines the Great Southern California ShakeOut.

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The Mpala project is profiled in this article on solar energy in the developing world.

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Mariana Amatullo, Vice President of Designmatters, speaks about design education for social change.

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Designmatters mentioned in this article on education as good citizenship.

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The Katrina Furniture Project is featured in this interview with Cynthua E. Smith, curator of the “Design for the Other 90%” exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt.

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A post highlighting Designmatters.

An article featuring the Cihame photography project.

Designmatters program and projects profiled in Design21, a social design network in partnership with UNESCO.

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The Color Guard Mosquito Net developed in the GE Healthcare: Anywhere studio is featured in this article on product and industrial design work by students in the U.S. and Europe.

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This article highlights the “Action: Art Center and the United Nations” exhibit at South Campus.

An article profiling the Designmatters initiative.

This article features the work done in the Nyumbani Village project.

On my plane ride back from D.C. to LA last week, I kept marveling about yet another first for us at Art Center: the opportunity to have a public showcase for our collaboration with the Innovation Center of Un Techo Para Mi Pais at the atrium lobby of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

from left to right: Matias Rojas, Mariana Amatullo, Penny Herscovitch, Dan Gottlieb, KC Cho, Julian Urgarte, Carolina Carrsco Barrera, Ana Maria Silva

This was the third venue for the exhibition.  Originally conceived for the Shanghai Cumulus Conference and World Expo “Better Cities, Better Life,” back in September 2010, this expanded version of the show came on the heels of a very successful display at the Royal College of Art for the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design Include 2011, their biannual conference about universal design, which this year was presided by Bill Moggridge and took a close look at design for social innovation.

Inclusivo exhibition display

Through the leadership of the Environmental Design Department, the Safe Agua Exhibition demonstrates the power of design and storytelling at their best.  Thanks to the vision of Department Chair David Mocarski and that of Penny Herscovitch and Dan Gottlieb (who are also the Environmental Design Lead Faculty of the Safe Agua project), the exhibition recreates the simple wooden framework of the media aguas, the transitional homes that the volunteers of Un Techo build throughout the 19 countries of Latin America where they are seeking to eradicate slums and make quality of life more dignified for the 200 million plus individuals throughout the continent who live at the base of the pyramid.

For the opening cocktail reception of the exhibition, I had a chance to say 2 minutes worth of remarks, which came at the tail end of those of IDB officials and were sandwiched in before a key moment in the history of the Innovation Center started by our close colleague Julian Ugarte: the signing of a multi-year treaty that should propel to scale some of Un Techo’s remarkable social innovation initiatives which range from sustainable micro-enterprises such as the Inclusivo lines of apparel and accessories to that of a low cost computer and communication portal to access internet services.

In the context of this important occasion, it was so special to tell the story of the outcomes of our collaboration with Un Techo, which has brought to scale already, and in in various ways, the designs of our students and alumni: ReLava, Ducha Halo, Mila….

ReLava by KC Cho (Product Design)

“If we are to imagine a more dignified and better future for those at the base of pyramid, we must include designers, they are after all essential to envisioning the material and immaterial forms of a more humane world.” I remember making that point and asking the audience for a round of applause to celebrate those designers from the Art Center team who were in our midst that evening: Penny, Dan and KC Cho, the designer of ReLava, which is one of the innovations from the project that will be featured in the upcoming Cooper-Hewitt exhibition “Design with the Other 90%: Cities” this fall in NY.

Back on the plane, an article I was reading on the current HBR was all about analyzing how you can outsource and amplify innovation within organizations.  The key take-away: this happens with folks who are fundamentally productive because they are driven by meaningful purpose for what they do, and hence amplify their impact.  I underlined some key words in the article:

1. Impact

2. Appreciation

3. Empathy

I had just been witness of a yet another manifestation of a project that was defined by these very same qualities and more.

Really looking forward to our Fall 2011 and the next chapter of this collaboration, Safe Agua Peru!

Designmatters put me and two of my fellow classmates at Art Center College of Design into a real world re-branding situation as part of a TDS studio last spring with an international aid organization called Project Concern International (PCI).   Kyle Murphy (Film),  Jeremy Jackson (Photography & Imaging) and I pitched the idea of shooting a film in Africa about the humanity that PCI was working with everyday and the client decided to go with the idea.

Flying to Africa for a week and shooting the film and subsequently editing the 40 hours of footage down into a digestible five minute commercial pushed me way outside of my comfort zone but I couldn’t help but come away with a fresh perspective on my career, the world, and my place in both. Our resulting film, Voices from the Field, went on to win a  Art Directors Club GOLD Cube which was a really gratifying way to cap off the entire experience.

Jeremy and Kyle were such amazing students to work with on the film. The job called for them to be both particle technicians and highly creative artists and they were able hold both in the palm of their hand flawlessly. The fact that I had such a good crew is just a testament to Art Center and how amazing the students are here.

I highly encourage people to investigate Designmatters and meet the program Director Elisa Ruffino and Vice President Mariana Amatullo, who are two of nicest people I know. They spend their days helping Art Center students use their smarts, social status, and personal voice to better mankind.

“Menstruation is one of those things that people don’t really want to have anything to do with. Most of the population is ‘left hanging after donation supplies run out.’”

—Elizabeth Scharpf, Founder, SHE

Background

Each year in developing countries like Rwanda, girls and women miss 50 days of work and school because they lack access to affordable and hygienic sanitary pads. The sanitary pads that are sold in Rwanda are imported, expensive and subject to a prohibitive 18 percent tax. As a result, many of these girls and women drop out of school and work, which has a traumatic impact on their communities. According to a United Nations study, females are the economic and social engines of their communities, with one dollar invested in a female offering a much higher return on investment than in a male. As a result, the alarming ‘drop-out’ rate of young women only reinforces the poverty and loss of opportunities for entire villages.

To address this problem, the social entrepreneur and women’s advocate Elizabeth Scharpf founded the nonprofit SHE (Sustainable Health Enterprises), which seeks to develop market-based approaches to help improve the quality of people’s lives in developing countries. In addition to increasing education among girls and women, recently SHE introduced locally manufactured, inexpensive and eco-friendly sanitary pads made of banana fiber for use in Rwanda and other developing countries. While the program is now off and running, the work of SHE is far from over. Making the sanitary pad crisis in Rwanda relevant to young people in the United States—so they will contact their congressmen, donate money to the organization, or simply spread the word—is the next step toward solving this global issue.

“We’re often told it’s indecent to talk about sanitary pads. Well, it’s indecent not to talk about sanitary pads. Getting pads to girls in Africa is one way that can contribute to them pulling out of poverty.”

—Elena Salij, Co-Lead Faculty, SHE Project

Design Brief:

Led by Designmatters, the Department of Illustration partnered with SHE in Spring 2011, and challenged a group of nine Art Center students to create an advertising campaign—using both traditional (print, video) and non-traditional media (like social networking, licensing, or installation as messaging)—to raise awareness among young women in the United States and the rest of the developed world of this critical lack of access to basic sanitary health supplies.  By engaging young women in the movement, SHE hopes to create worldwide demand for a solution to this problem. Faculty members Ann Field, Elena Salij and Christine Nasser led the studio.

The project presented significant challenges for the students, most notably: How does one tackle a “taboo” issue that no one wants to talk about, even in the U.S.? But one that is negatively affecting millions of females each year?

Research and Project Development

Throughout the term, students gathered information and research on the impact of unaffordable sanitary pads in Rwanda. They participated in Skype calls with Scharpf (who was in Rwanda), and she explained that most Rwandan girls are not educated about their bodies and menstruation, and that only 10 percent of the menstruating population uses sanitary napkins, with the rest using un-hygienic rags, bark and mud. The main barriers include cost and lack of education.

Students also heard from guest speakers like alumna Radhika Bhalla (GRAD ID ’10), who began working with SHE the previous fall and shared her experiences with the group from a recent trip to Rwanda. She discussed the sanitary pad market, retail environment and manufacturing process. Another guest speaker, alumna Wendy MacNaughton (FINE ‘99), spoke about her experience in that country when she was commissioned to create and illustrate the first national democratic campaign in Rwanda.  MacNaughton stressed the importance of creating campaigns that are culturally relevant, ethnically sensitive and easily understood—advice that applied to the students’ projects. “You have to ditch the ego,” she said. “The worst thing is to stay in a bubble and just design without paying attention to the end users.”

In this case, the end users were young Americans, and the students researched the population’s perceptions regarding menstruation here in the U.S. and how they could make the topic more accessible while injecting a sense of urgency into the need to help the girls and women of Rwanda.

Outcomes

The final presentations featured an extraordinary range of work—-from consumer goods that could be purchased with a portion of the proceeds benefitting SHE to more overt campaigns with calls to action to donate money or take political action.

For example, second term Advertising student Amy Cook created posters that capitalize on the built-in camaraderie found in female restrooms, where she envisions the posters would be hung. “Excuse me, do you need an extra pad?” is the recurring question found on these materials, which feature cut out silhouettes of females joining hands in unity, standing strong. As Cook explained, “I’ve often witnessed strangers asking one another for a quarter or a tampon while in the restroom. We’re willing to help out strangers in the bathroom, so why not extend this solidarity even further? A girl is a girl no matter where you’re from.” Each poster includes information on how to make a text donation to SHE. Cook also created a print ad containing the statement, “It’s not a luxury, it’s a human right.”

“A girl is a girl no matter where you are from.”

—Amy Cook, Advertising Student

This idea that access to sanitary pads is a fundamental human right resonated with Kathleen Lorden as well, a third term Graduate Broadcast Cinema student. Her project possessed a more militant tone, focusing on instigating a campaign to mail sanitary pads to President Barack Obama. Lorden’s defining image is a sanitary pad with the words “This is a Human Right” emblazoned across it, and it appears in all of her project materials—on sanitary pads, in letters to President Obama (who would receive a pad with each letter), t-shirts, posters and more. Lorden’s overall concept was born in social networking and depends on the multiplier effect of friends sharing with friends to spread the message. “I want to get political leaders to be aware and talk about the issue, and to pressure Rwanda’s leaders to lift the unfair tax,” she said. “There’s an unapologetic character to my campaign.”

Julie Wojnarowski, Alison Krumweide and Heather Landis attacked the challenge through humor. Their collaboration resulted in an entertaining short video animation starring down-to-earth puppets Britney and Heather, who in their Valley Girl accents dissect menstruation and the situation in Rwanda, concluding, “life shouldn’t stop every 28 days.” “We wanted to use the puppets in a compelling, heartfelt, yet humorous way to bring awareness to a serious subject. Being part of the target audience ourselves, I think we were successful,” said Wojnarowski.

Several students pursued a more subtle approach, including Cynthia Halley, currently a fifth term student, who created pillows with butterflies (“a symbol of inhibition” according to Halley) that could be sold in boutiques, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting SHE.

Jon Lau and John Kim, the two male members of the studio, explored traditionally feminine motifs and became fixated on “braids” for their youthful and “girly” qualities. Believing that braids were a perfect way to address the younger Western female demographic, Lau created two illustrations of the same girl: one wearing an expression of misery, the other with a stronger, more confident expression. “I was hoping the effect would be to compel one to take action or do additional research of their own,” said Lau. Kim, meanwhile, created an emblem for SHE that could find a home on tote bags and articles of clothing, signaling membership in the SHE tribe.

Next Steps:

Faculty members Ann Field, Christine Nasser and Elena Salij were all pleased with the students’ final work, agreeing that the projects represented authentic and discrete proposals for how visual materials can help SHE. A second stage of collaboration through Designmatters will take the most promising proposals to a new phase of development.

“We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes. The ARkStorm is essentially two historic storms (January 1969 and February 1986) put back to back in a scientifically plausible way. The model is not an extremely extreme event.”

—Dr. Lucile Jones, Chief Scientist, USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project and Architect of the ARkStorm Scenario

Project Overview:

Over the span of six months during fall 2010 and spring 2011, Designmatters partnered with the Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project (MHDP) of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to help design a series of interconnected outcomes:  a communication strategy and public awareness film, a cross-sector emergency planning meeting for decision-makers, and a Summit that unveiled a scientific scenario which models a California hypothetical storm that would cause more than an initial 300 billion dollars in damage, the ARkStorm Scenario.

Background: The ARkStorm Scenario

The USGS Multi Hazards Demonstration Project’s (MHDP) second full scenario, called ARkStorm, addresses massive U.S. West Coast storms analogous to those that devastated California in 1861–62. Storms of this magnitude are projected to become more frequent and intense as a result of climate change.

The MHDP assembled experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), USGS, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, the State of California, California Geological Survey, the University of Colorado, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), California Department of Water Resources, California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA) and other organizations to design the large, but scientifically plausible, hypothetical storm scenario that would provide emergency responders, resource managers, and the public a realistic assessment of what is historically possible.

To learn more about the key findings of the scenario, see here.

Phase 1: A Social Innovation Charette “DesignStorm”

Idea Generation + Synthesis + Innovative Results

Under the leadership of Product Design Department Chair Karen Hofmann, Art Center has developed a methodology for design-centric innovation workshops or charettes that are held on an ongoing basis, facilitated by the Educational Partnerships office, and engage students and faculty for short, intensive bursts of creative sessions with outside partners.  These are typically organized around a particular topic, technology or specific challenge presented by the sponsor company or organization.

With ARkStorm, Designmatters had the opportunity to partner with the Product Design Department in a social innovation focused DesignStorm that had a two-fold objective:

1. Enrich communication and collaborative processes between a key group of stakeholders and participating organizations

2. Yield tangible, action-oriented results for consensus-building in preparation of the ARkStorm Summit

The one-day DesignStorm was held in October 2010 and included a broad range of participants (emergency managers, structural engineers, meteorologists, business leaders, geologists, social scientists, and policy makers).

Process
The day was striking for its high-intensity, and ability to convene cross-disciplinary organizations in a potent dialogue on the topic of ARkStorm strategies for preparation, mitigation, response and recovery.

Participants worked in short, concentrated sessions throughout the day, in teams with Art Center faculty and student “visualizers,” and in pre-assigned groups designed to maximize expertise on the following key issues around ARkStorm:

• Communication Strategies + Community Involvement
• Emergency Response Planning + Evacuation Procedures
• Infrastructure Planning + Flood Control
• Storm Scaling + Consistent Messaging

These faculty-led sessions used design-based methods for crafting future scenarios and possible solutions that could be driven by the stakeholders in the room. Participants were asked to arrive open-minded and ready to explore new conceptual ground, in an undistracted and highly-focused, immersive setting.

“The process was exciting.  Participants were engaged throughout the day. They were doodling and diagramming and laughing and smiling. We had moved the dial from a relatively quiet, reserved room of experts that didn’t know each other well, to a room full of potential relationships and possibilities for the future.”

—Sherry Hoffman, Faculty, Environmental Design, Co-lead Facilitator, ARkStorm DesignStorm

Six hours and over 1000 ideas later, with 100 plus critical topics identified, the Designstorm ended.  With a library of ideas created, vital connections discovered, a priority list for topics developed, momentum was strong going into the January ARkStorm.

“DesignStorms are very informative because the subject matter, the problem to be solved, if you like, is presented in a very condensed manner and there is a sense of urgency to start developing possible solutions paths.”

—Frido Beisert, Faculty, Product Design, Co-lead Facilitator, ARkStorm DesignStorm

Phase 2: ARkStorm Summit

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and California Emergency Management Agency (CalEMA) presented the ARkStorm Summit in January, 2011, a two-day event to engage stakeholders from across California to take action as a result of the USGS ARkStorm Scenario’s findings, which were officially released at the Summit.

Held at the California State University of Sacramento, the event drew 200+ participants and leaders from across the state and the country, from 65 agencies and organizations.  Emergency managers, regulatory and scientific agencies, policymakers, business leaders, and other experts from the public and private sector were engaged to address data surrounding the real potential for a massive storm, and to convene on actionable inter-agency steps moving forward.  To encourage dialogue, all participants participated in interactive breakout sessions led by an Art Center Summit team, which employed a similar methodology to the one-day charette, but on a much larger scale.

“The ARkStorm Summit was a combination of energy, expertise, and experience.  From “what if” questions to “blue sky” strategies, to rapid fire brainstorming, participants got excited about the chance to dialogue with each other.”

—Elisa Ruffino, Director, Designmatters

Leading up to the Summit, this team of Art Center faculty, students and alumni, many of whom participated in the initial charette Designstorm, was convened by Designmatters to design the key “interactive breakout” structure of the Summit sessions as well as communication methodologies and visualization tools to provoke discussion and help consensus building among stakeholders.

The resulting Summit sessions (designed to be engaging and outcome-oriented) that were facilitated by Art Center used an immersive design-centric approach that focused on enriching communication and collaboration between participants with the goal to create actionable solutions.

The break-out sessions designed had the following innovative sequence:

1. Presentations by experts with deep- dive data sharing
2. Simultaneous Ideation with participants based on the topics of the scenario and the presentations of experts
3. “Big idea, small paper” modules (these allowed participants to identify and capture the most relevant information for future directions)
4. Clustering by strategic topic (communication/policy/infrastructure/partnerships) culled from “the big idea/small paper” sessions
5. Rapid-fire download of initial conclusions by participants
6. “Paths to Action:” strategic /actionable next steps are identified by participants

Each day of the Summit concluded with each group of participants making presentations of their “Paths to Action” strategy for all attendees to review.

Outcomes:

In addition to the strategy sessions represented at the charette and the Summit, the Art Center team contributed several key communication tools toward the initiative, including:

• The featured graphic identity of the Summit designed by alumnus Greg Wong
• A live visual mind map of the ArkStorm Scenario
• The Summit opening film, a motion graphics piece by alumni Chris Wu and Josh Nakaya which highlighted the results of the charette and the goals of the two-day Summit
• The ARkStorm film by Theo Alexopoulos, a short movie that visually translates the scientific data of the scenario and which served as a key platform for the Summit’s discussions, as well as providing ongoing media attention and visibility for the Scenario.

“The public is often deaf, confused or misinformed about the science of climate change and sea level rise. This has stalled a collective response to and preparation for a future that will be very different. The design challenge for students was to make this complex subject clear, relevant and compelling to people visiting the Aquarium. These designers created ‘stories’ and experiences that invite people to learn, and do something, about sea level rise.”

— Heidrun Mumper-Drumm, Co-lead faculty, Aquarium Project

Design Brief / Challenge:

In collaboration with the Aquarium of the Pacific, “Project Coastal Crisis” challenged students to develop educational campaign strategies and products to bring public awareness about the impact of Sea Level Rise in Southern California Coastal communities.

Designing appropriate strategies to respond to the challenge of sea level rise was the focus for “Project Coastal Crisis,” a trans-disciplinary project embedded in the “Design for Sustainability” studio of Art Center’s product design department curriculum. Students in Project Coastal Crisis were challenged to translate urgent scientific data on sea level rise and coastal resiliency into readily-accessible public awareness communications and educational tools.

About the Aquarium of the Pacific:

The Aquarium of the Pacific, located in Long Beach, California, is the fourth most visited aquarium in the nation. Its mission is simple: to instill a sense of wonder, respect and stewardship for the Pacific Ocean, its inhabitants and ecosystems.  Beyond its world-class animal exhibits, the Aquarium provides opportunities to delve deeper into ocean issues. It has redefined the modern aquarium. It is a community gathering place where diverse cultures and the arts are celebrated and a place where important topics concerning the relationships of humans with our planet are explored by scientists, policy-makers, and stakeholders in the search for sustainable solutions.

In May 2009, the Aquarium convened a National Conference at the Long Beach Convention Center with support in part provided by NOAA and The National Science Foundation: Ocean on the Edge: Top Ocean Issues.  One of the published reports that ensued after the conference and a series of workshops that followed was entitled “Coastal Hazards, Too Many People Living Too Close To The Edge of A Rising Sea,” and explored seal level rise and inundation—the causes and consequences, the prognosis for the future and what can be done to decrease vulnerability and risk to make coastal communities more resilient.  The leading work of the Aquarium in making ocean issues come alive for the public and recognizing design as an essential contributor in that effort became the point of entry for this educational collaboration with Designmatters that was supported in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Service Centers.

Background:

The Earth and the ocean are warming.  Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age about 18,000 years ago.  However, sea levels have risen and fallen throughout geologic time.  The shoreline, beaches, and coastal ecosystems including wetlands, mangrove forests and barrier islands have advanced and retreated laterally with the rising and falling sea.  For nearly all of human history, some 100,000 years, humans have moved with the shoreline.

But something is different now.  More than half of the 6.8 billion people worldwide live near the coast.  Hundreds of millions live near in low-lying coastal areas.  We have built housing and infrastructure needed to support them, all at the edge of a restless sea. Over the course of the past century, sea levels have been rising at a significantly higher rate than ever before. Major contributors to sea level rise (SLR) are thermal expansion and the melting of land ice cover in the Arctic. Sea level is expected to rise somewhere between three and six feet by 2100—but it could potentially rise more than 20 feet if ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica continue to melt at current rates. This could be catastrophic, eradicating dry land and engulfing entire communities in water.

SLR contributes to the erosion of the coasts, threatens low-lying regions and transportation portals, contaminates groundwater and crops and increases the frequency and strength of storms. While SLR is imminent and adaptation as well as mitigation strategies are necessary, steps must be taken to reduce CO2 emissions that may lessen its catastrophic impact on future generations.

“Creating a sustainable future is a design problem, the most important and challenging design problem ever faced by humans. Science provides the knowledge that defines the conditions of sustainability. Technology provides tools to achieve these qualities. Art has the power to evoke emotions and move people. Design can capture and integrate the best of science, technology and art to provide a clear, compelling roadmap to a more sustainable future. It is for these reasons that the Aquarium of the Pacific, an informal science institution, has formed a partnership with Art Center College of Design.”

— Jerry Schubel Ph.D., President and CEO, Aquarium of the Pacific

Research and Project Development:

The project launched with a workshop briefing at the Aquarium of the Pacific with leadership from Aquarium stakeholders and led by Jerry Schubel, Aquarium President.  Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego shared expertise and data on the global, national and regional issues around global warming and sea level rise. The class took this foundational research to further understand key issues around the current and future state of coastal resiliency and habitat restoration, the target audiences for a communications campaign, and the kinds of action-based advocacy efforts that could support the environmental work of both the Aquarium and NOAA.

Most of the student teams focused on the scientific data that modeled implications for SLR scenarios 50 to 100 years out in coastal communities in California.  They explored environmental as well as socio-economic factors that would impact how communities and policy makers would “adapt to a new normal.”  They also reviewed carefully what had been the most successful strategies the Aquarium had already used to communicate to the public.

Week 4 saw a review and presentation of student research with the Aquarium team, and a midterm review of concepts in development was held at the Aquarium in early March, coinciding with the Ted2011 conference in Long Beach. The final presentation to stakeholders was held in April at the Aquarium.

“Projects like these are about educating you not by force, but by engagement. These projects have touch points that linger long after the experience is over.”

— Karen Hofmann, Chair, Product Design Department

Outcomes / Projects:

Students formed four different teams, each producing mixed media communication strategies to educate Aquarium of the Pacific visitors and other target audiences, including California coastal communities and policymakers. Careful consideration was taken to ensure that the campaigns would be easily accessible to a wide audience. The four teams and their outcomes are outlined below.

Our Rising Seas

This team focused its efforts on the group most likely to be impacted by SLR: children. Children are most likely to be impacted by sea level rise, and they are also most likely to create life-long habits that are eco-friendly. This interactive exhibit was created to be a lighthearted and fun experience for children, and to push forward the primary message that small actions can—and do—make a difference. For example, sliding “wave-like” panels and an interactive “greenhouse gas” wall reveal facts and information, while a game of hopscotch teaches about sea level rise. Telescopes show what at-risk cities—Long Beach, San Francisco, New York and Atlanta—might look like in the future, and participants can take a shower test to learn how to prevent wasting water. A game of limbo with a pole shaped like a wave between two cities illustrates how much work must go into making sea level lower, while a character created for the exhibit, Seymour, teaches children adaptation strategies for communities living near the shore. The exhibit includes a takeaway booklet and stamps called I Commit to Make a Difference, featuring fun-to-achieve action steps children can take every day. Children not only have a great day at the Aquarium, but they are encouraged and empowered to take action from this day forward.

Carbon Detox

This team began by framing the problem for the general public: Where are we now? Where do we need to be? And where are we headed? Beyond public education, the campaign aims to push the reality that our future will be impacted by sea level rise—it’s not if, but when. All concepts were conceived to be economically sound, versatile and low-tech.

An accordion pop-up exhibit is designed to feature climate change mitigation strategies, while an interactive table, placed in the high- traffic café area—is intended to spark education and dialogue while visitors eat and relax. The table features a futuristic United States map, customized with missing key pieces of the coast as a result of sea level rise. Magnetic sand underneath the tabletop is reactive to magnetic salt and pepper shakers, allowing users to physically add land back to the map, thereby metaphorically taking action to mitigate sea level rise.  Napkins with messaging and tips (drive less, conserve energy, be consumer conscious) serve as consumer takeaways.

Sustainable Aquaculture

Choose Well for the Future: This team designed a complementary piece to the exhibit with the goal of representing the benefits of aquaculture and its role in addressing climate change and SLR.

Messaging was created around the importance of aquaculture and its benefits.  Benefits of this system include reduced emission of methane by substituting for meat-based diets more fish-based proteins, while developing healthy marine ecosystems and a sustainable form of food production to replace agricultural areas lost to sea level rise.

The pinball game was designed to reaffirm these messages by releasing a ball, which represents nutrients. Players aim it toward the “sustainable” side of the game board—a difficult feat. The nutrient balls then tumble through multiple “eco-systems,” which cycle the “nutrients” for downstream systems. The rewards of multi-trophic aquaculture are represented as the “nutrients” travel through the sustainable side of the board with bells and lights that signify the benefits of a balanced, non-toxic, biological cycle of food production. Conversely, unsustainable fish farming is represented by the one-way flow of “nutrients” and chemicals through one, fish-specific “eco-system,” with increasing build up of “toxins.” Nutrient balls traveling through the unsustainable system are greeted with buzzers and error lights as the balls collect and build up on the sea floor. Exhibit takeaways include postcards and petitions supporting integrated multi- trophic aquaculture to send to local legislators

Think Sink

The goal of the Think Sink campaign is to raise awareness through humor, to encourage audiences to decrease carbon emissions, and to garner public support to implement policy change around the issues. Think Sink takes a deliberately fun and light-hearted approach, encouraging interest while disseminating key information around critical issues.

Ready-to-market products include: reusable coffee cups and “float pens” that cleverly visualize rising sea levels in cities like Los Angeles; Sea Level Socks, Boxers and Panties with “rising wave” designs of various levels meant to be visible on the body; the Sea Level Rise Bikini, which can be inflated and used in a sea level rise emergency; and others. The clothing and product lines developed around Think Sink, although whimsical, share a common goal of driving traffic to the campaign website—envisioned as a space to catalyze a grassroots movement around mitigation and adaptation.

After viewing the exhibition, viewers are directed to a ThinkSink website where they can sign a petition urging mitigation and adaptation responses from governing bodies.

Next Steps:

Designmatters developed an informational brochure highlighting the key proposals from the class.  The project proposals are currently under review with project partners and a careful assessment will determine which concepts go forward onto an implementation phase.

The projects were also on exhibition at The NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory August 25 – September 1, 2011 and will be on display again Saturday, November 12, 2011 for the JPL Climate Change Symposium.

With studies projecting that by the year 2015 more than half of all people living with HIV in the United States will be over age 50, New York based team of Katja Heinemann and Naomi Schegloff are bringing a vital public consciousness to the forefront with their awareness campaign, The Graying of AIDS. The first and only national education and prevention effort dedicated to this issue, The Graying of AIDS aims to educate health care and social service professionals about the risks, the damaging stigmas, and the inspiring truths associated with older adults and HIV/AIDS in our world today.

“By 2015 more than 50% of all people living with HIV in the US will be over 50.”

- from the Graying of AIDS website

Design Brief / Challenge:

The “Graying of AIDS: Off The Wall” studio was conceived to amplify the pressing dialogue inspired by the work of New York-based team Katja Heinemann and Naomi Schegloff and their national public awareness campaign, The Graying of AIDS.  As the first and only broad-based education and prevention effort dedicated to the issues of older adults and HIV/AIDS, The Graying of AIDS campaign is bringing a vital public consciousness to the forefront, educating health care and social service professionals about the risks, the damaging stigmas, and the inspiring truths associated with older adults and HIV/AIDS in our world today.

The students in Off The Wall were invited to create an exhibition companion to the campaign, to spark awareness and provoke discussion around these timely topics.

“From the initial briefings to the display of the 30 coffee mugs, this Off the Wall project hit a powerful chord with the students, teachers, and everyone else involved. By using the mugs as identifiers of personality and experience, the students were able to combine design and writing to create a unique and unconventional exhibit that conveyed deep emotion as well as penetrating observations.”

– Brian Rea, Lead Faculty,
Illustration Department, Off The Wall Studio

Research and Project Development:

Led by Illustration department faculty member Brian Rea, students in Off The Wall were initially asked to research and examine a wide range of complex topics in preparing to design their exhibition:

• What is ageism and how does our culture marginalize older adults?
• How can this piece galvanize a meaningful dialogue?
• Is this an education piece, an awareness piece, or both?
• Are there stigmas and stereotypes we should avoid or ones we should use?
• Can we make a piece that compels people to think differently and compassionately about individual stories?
• Is it stronger to discuss sexuality or an aging disease?

To do this, students and faculty held two initial briefing meetings including a skype session with Heinemann and Schegloff to further explore their expertise on ageism, sexuality for older adults, and issues with health care providers and social workers who struggle in communicating with an aging population living with HIV/AIDS.  The students used these briefings and studio meetings to gather information from key stakeholders and process complex social topics. After their additional individual research, each student began sketching potential ideas for the installation space dedicated in Art Center’s Williamson Gallery.

Later, the students shifted to the role of art director and pursued two goals: 1) to raise awareness about ageism and older adults living with HIV/AIDS, and 2) to produce a relatable human story for audiences of the exhibition. Following their explorations the students felt strongly that the “human stories” behind their research were the most important messaging aspects of the project.

The students decided to use a common, but often personalized household item—the coffee mug—to assert the identities and stories of aging populations living with AIDS, and to repurpose an everyday artifact into a strong advocacy tool.   The collaborative process among the multi-disciplinary team enabled the students to develop unique concepts that could harness the power of their research and transforming it into an accessible and personal vernacular via the messages on the mugs.

The last week of the studio focused on fabrication and installation. The students honed and further edited the coffee mug messages.  Each student designed two to three mug messages digitally and transferred their designs using porcelain black markers. A 36′ x 15′ wall was painted red and the 30 mugs (white with black text) were installed at eye level in a single line for readability and to create a striking contrast to the large red wall.

Outcomes / Projects:

“The Graying of AIDS: Off the Wall” Exhibition debuted in Art Center’s Williamson Gallery, alongside the prominent existing exhibition, “Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Awareness Posters.”

The Off the Wall project delivered a powerful and meaningful installation that aimed to poignantly complement the vitality of The Graying of AIDS national campaign. The students’ work asks audiences to recognize the human stories behind the mugs, in addition to appreciating the strong visual impact.

“Professor Rea’s trans-disciplinary course gave us a tremendous opportunity to examine and represent some of the core concepts in the Graying of AIDS exhibition, in particular ageism. The explorations with Ms. Schegloff and Ms. Heinemann were extraordinarily helpful and insightful. In the end, I feel our depictions of the coffee mugs let us give an intimate voice to a very complex topic,”

– Yerina Cha, Illustration Student

Part of the California Higher Education Sustainability Conference, July 10-13, 2011.

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July 12, 2011
CSU Long Beach
Long Beach, California

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May 24, 2011
Beckman Center of the National Academies
Irvine, California

Category of Student Promotions – Merit
View Award
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Core 77 Design Awards

Category of Design for Social Impact for Safe Agua – Professional Notable
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View Project

ICSID World Design Impact Prize

for Safe Agua – Finalist
View Award Project Page
View Project

AIGA 365: Design Effectiveness Award

Category of Digital Motion Design for Safe Agua Chile “The Harry Gota Story”
View Project

Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) International Design Excellence Award (IDEA)

Category of Design Strategy and Management for Safe Agua – Bronze
View Award
View Award on Fast Co. Design

Finalist, KC Cho & Jackie Black for Safe Agua’s ReLava Kitchen Workstation
View Project

Finalist, Jessica Yeh & Narbeh Dereghishian for Safe Agua’s Ducha Halo Portable Shower
View Project

Art Directors Club Award

Gold Cube – Interactive Division, Online Content Category
Voices From the Field short film
Produced for the PCI 50th Anniversary Campaign

Art Directors Club Award

Book Design Category – Merit Award
Safe Agua Chile Book

Art Directors Club Award

Motion Design Category – Merit Award
Safe Agua “The Harry Gota Story”

UNICEF

Innovation Unit

New York, NY
Summer 2011

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Dee’s Blog

NCIIA was established in 1995 with the support of The Lemelson Foundation, legacy of prolific inventor Jerome Lemelson. NCIIA provides student start-ups with early stage funding, business strategy development training, mentoring, and investment, as well as provides staff and faculty with funding for courses and programs, opportunities for recognition, and entrepreneurship education training and networking.  Since its founding, NCIIA has funded 325 experiential courses and new programs throughout hundreds of universities around the country and has leveraged more than 140 million dollars in additional funding, helping propel projects that have resulted in more than 100 new businesses.

Jessica and Narbeh at the NCIIA Open Minds event.

The Safe Agua “Ducha Halo” team, Jessica Yeh (ENV) and Narbeh Dereghishian (PROD) were selected among the innovator teams of the Open Minds exhibition and were one of 3 teams whose video of their social innovation was chosen as a top finalist by public vote as part of the  2011 Open Minds video competition.

The weekend also served as a valuable opportunity for  students to network and seek out potential investors and collaborators who can help advance their ideas.  “I can’t believe we had the opportunity to meet these wonderful people that are just as passionate about their projects as much as we are about ours. I have never met so many social impact innovators and bright minds in one setting. I learned so much and gained a different perspective about the whole business side of the project. I am still in the process of trying to soak all of it in! It was a really great experience and we did get some business cards and good questions that definitely challenge us to push the Ducha Halo forward,” reflects Yeh.

For the Art Center faculty engaged in 2 distinct NCIIA -funded projects through Designmatters, NCIIA was an important opportunity to be part of panel discussions and paper presentations.  Safe Agua lead faculty Dan Gottlieb, Penny Herschovitch (ENV) and Liliana Becerra (PROD) attended as well Steve Montgomery (GRAD ID), who along with Becerra (PROD) taught the  Creating Social Value through Design TDS in 2010.

“For me it was incredible to realize that there are so many professionals out there teaching similar topics related to entrepreneurship and social impact. It was inspiring to see that they all work hard to come up with ideas and as much as they have great success some times, they also learn from their failures and use them to move forward and come up with even better projects”, shared Becerra.

(from left to right) Liliana Becerra, Mariana Amatullo, Jessica Yeh, Narbeh Dereghishian, Penny Herschovitch, and Dan Gottlieb by the Ducha Halo installation at the Smithsonian.

The NCIIA Sustainable Vision Kickoff Workshop was held the day before of the conference and allowed Designmatters VP, Mariana Amatullo, along with Gottlieb and Herscovitch to prepare with fellow NCIIA grantees for the work ahead with a new NCIIA grant that will help support the expansion of the “Safe Agua” investigation, Safe Agua Peru.  The project is envisioned to build on the Designmatters partnership with Un Techo Para Mi Pais, this time with slum communities in Lima, Peru.

Here are a few 1st-hand testimonials from the team:

“Our panel was a very rewarding moment- when we finished our presentation on our case studies of Safe Agua and Creating Social Value Through Design, the audience of mainly engineers was so interested in the approach that design brings to social impact projects and commented on the possibility of collaborating in the future to achieve better projects”- Liliana Becerra

“NCIIA Open Minds was a dream opportunity for a student like myself, looking to break into social entrepreneurship and future partnerships. The exhibit included like minded people, all focused on social impact and fairly educated in their respective field. There were a wide collection of disciplines from engineers, to biologists, to business types, and we added our designer perspective to the mix.  By presenting our pressurized shower solution, the Ducha Halo,

Narbeh had an amazing opportunity to speak with Paul Polak, founder of IDE, a nonprofit that is harnessing the power of the market to alleviate poverty.

we were able to get the opinion of the brilliant minds within the social enterprise community in regards to our product, the potential for impact, and how sustainable our business model is. This community helped us realize areas that we must place more focus on, such as heating technology, durability, and easy maintenance. They appreciated our simple solution to such a widespread problem and scale of testing that we had already conducted through the NGO and the communities in Chile and Argentina.

Most importantly this helped me realize that there are other people in the social and humanitarian space, and that I am not alone on this mission. This has fueled my ambitions to continue with not only the project but also to continue on my quest to become a social entrepreneur post graduation. The production version of the Ducha Halo will hopefully help provide warm showers to families all over developing countries in Latin America soon, and this will be my first of many solutions for the developing world.” -Narbeh Dereghishian.

Jessica and Narbeh demonstrate the Ducha Halo at the Snithsonian's Spark!Lab to kids while introducing them to issues of hygiene and sanitation common in developing countries.

“For me, one brief interaction captured the spirit of the OPEN Minds event – to inspire curiosity, empathy & socially-driven invention, and disseminate appropriate technologies globally to those with the fewest resources. Jessie and Narbeh were demonstrating their Ducha Halo portable shower to young children in the Smithsonian Museum of American History’s Spark!Lab. They explained to the young visitors that nearly one billion kids around the world can’t just turn on the tap to get running water, and that the Ducha Halo offers a low-cost solution that makes it easy, safe and dignified for all of these kids to take a shower. In response, one boy, about 6 years old, asked a very good question: “Couldn’t you punch a lot of holes in the bottom of a bucket, then fill it with water and hold it over your head to shower?” I hope that his curiosity endures, and maybe one day he will grow up to tackle the next generation’s global challenges. - Penny Herschovitch.

Johnathan Goldman (DM Fellow at OAS), Steve Montgomery, and Narbeh Dereghishian at the Smithsonian Museum at 2011 Open Minds Event.

“Among the things that impressed me at the NCIIA 15th annual OPEN conference were that colleges from MIT to Rice, Stanford to Penn State were all moving beyond the invention/innovation space into the commercialization/entrepreneur/social entrepreneur space—on a global scale. This being my first NCIIA conference, I imagined engineers showing off gizmos. Not so. Instead, saw strategic thinking, viable and often validated business models. And some cool gizmos. Also realized that there’s a disconnect between between government-funded innovation for economic recovery and research, innovation and entrepreneurship at universities. Specifically, Art Center! - Steven Montgomery.

” I was introduced to the work of NCIIA and the Lemelson Foundation three years ago through my colleague and Designmatters collaborator, Professor Ken Pickar from Caltech.   I remember attending NCIIA’s annual conference then and quickly immersing myself in what was a terribly stimulating context to meet like-minded colleagues:  experts, faculty, practitioners and students from a wide network of schools throughout the country who were all sharing innovations and inventions that stand-out for their entrepreneurship framework and social purpose.  Fast-forward to March 2011: it is so rewarding to be back this time with the design leads of two deeply consequential projects that are made possible through Creating Social Value through Design and the upcoming Safe Agua Peru, and especially to route for our students. It is just fantastic to revisit  the journey in the past 3 years leading up to what  I foresee will be our ongoing an collective engagement with the community of innovation that NCIIA fosters.” - Mariana Amatullo.

For more on the NCIIA’s 2011 OpenMinds Showcase and to see Ducha Halo in the press, visit
Open Minds: A meeting of the minds in DC highlights student innovations
Colleges Nurture World-Changing Inventions
From Lab to Startup: Student Innovators Go to Washington
From Inventions to Ventures: NCIIA’s Open Minds Showcase

IDSA 2011 Western Conference

Guest Speakers

May 6-7
San Jose State University
San Jose, California

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April 28, 2011  6pm
Santa Monica Public Library
Santa Monica, California

Teed ["in waiting"]: Portraits of South Sudanhighlights portraits and images captured while Graphic Design student Tyler Paulson served local missionaries in the region during parts of 2008 and 2010. Paulson’s journey captures a sensitive, yet exciting transition for a generation of people that have only known war. His images praise a world of peace which has quickly opened exciting opportunities for healing and growth.

“Taken after a ceasefire, these portraits capture a people experiencing their first taste of peace in decades while awaiting the hope of becoming a new nation,” Paulson says. “I met a people of great beauty, but with deep scars—and I sought out to know and serve them, and to share their story.”

After achieving their independence from Great Britain in 1956, the people of South Sudan spent thirty-nine of the following fifty years in a war with the Sudanese government. In 2005, the two sides reached a peace agreement, ending the war and giving South Sudan the opportunity to vote for independence in 2011.

Paulson describes his life-changing experience as witness to “a great wave of transformation” taking place within the mid-western regions of South Sudan. During his visit, he worked with missionaries who operated a medical clinic and a training school for pastors, of which he “met a people in the midst of transition and anticipation.”

“So many things broke my heart, but I also saw so much beauty during my time in Africa. Together they forever changed the way I saw the world. The slower pace of life instilled in me a much greater appreciation for the simple joy of sharing life within a community of people,” reflects Paulson. “I’ve experienced why justice and compassion are worth fighting for, and have discovered that art is a powerful weapon.”

Themes of seeing, knowing, redemption and beauty are emulated through his vivid imagery. His frames carefully and considerately place his subjects in context of what is quickly changing, while keeping in mind the remaining evidence of war that serves as one of many everyday reminders. Paulson’s exhibition captures intimate moments of tradition, such as an initiation into adulthood, where cuts are made on the skin and then filled, causing an infection that when healed, creates scares that protrude from the skin in a dramatic, tattoo-like fashion. Other images include glimpses of optimistic daily endeavors.

His photographs tell many stories.  One of the most touching is about a student named Donato, who was attacked while riding his bike home from town in late 2009.  He suffered a serious blow to the head and had to be evacuated to Kenya to receive more intensive treatment.  He spent his Christmas that year in Nairobi as part of Paulson’s friends’ family, receiving life-saving treatment, experiencing the big city, and learning about a life lived by faith.  “Donato represents the future of South Sudan.  He’s a hard-working student, mentored by those he helps around the ministry compound.  With strength and conviction, he keeps a smile on his face despite the adversity he has endured,” Paulson shares.

Teed ["in waiting"]: Portraits of South Sudan is the culmination of a Designmatters-facilitated independent study led by Graphic Design faculty member Gloria Kondrup.

An artist reception will be held on Saturday, March 26th from 6pm to 9pm, and the exhibition will be on display until April 1st.

For more information about Tyler Paulson’s powerful journey and work, visit teedsudan.com

Include 2011 Conference

April 18-20, 2011
Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design
Royal College or Art, London, UK

“The USGS Wildfires studio has been yet another wonderful partnership between the USGS and Art Center. The results the students created are so innovative and exciting, and they help move us closer to our ultimate goal: bringing hazard science to the communities of Southern California.”

— John Bwarie, USGS

“Having the fresh perspective of our students is such a valuable asset to an organization like the USGS. These students represent the very group that USGS is trying to reach.”

— Gloria Kondrup, Graphic Design Faculty

“Because I grew up in the wildland-urban interface of San Diego County, wildfires were an important subject to me. Getting to work with the USGS and utilizing technology to drive adaptive design was an experience I greatly enjoyed and grew from as a designer.”

—Tyler Paulson, Graphic Design Student

Design Brief / Challenge:

On the edges of our cities and towns, there is a living, dynamic relationship between our man-made environments and the omnipresent forces of nature. A peaceful, symbiotic existence exists when this relationship is thoughtfully and carefully nurtured—yet a potentially destructive, and even violent, environment can quickly emerge if not.

Understanding how to successfully manage these shared boundaries between mankind and nature is crucial to preventing full-scale fire emergencies. Maintaining a peaceful relationship between urban development and the unique natural environments so treasured as part of the Southern California landscape is a necessity.

For this studio, the U.S. Geological Survey charged students with establishing an identity system for their Wildfire Scenario, a compendium of scientific knowledge to address wildfire prevention and education through research and governmental advocacy.

About the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS):

A bureau of the United States Department of the Interior, the USGS is a governmental scientific agency that provides impartial information on the country’s landscape, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it.

Multi-Hazard Demonstration Project Mission:

The USGS Multi-Hazard Project is improving our resiliency to earthquakes, floods, wildfires, landslides, tsunamis, and coastal erosion in southern California by applying science to community decision-making and emergency response.

Research and Project Development:

Before they could begin developing solutions, students had to research the work of the USGS and, specifically, the Multi-Hazard Demonstration Project–its mission and the issues it faces. Through extensive research and interviews with USGS researchers and scientists, they began to comprehend the multi-tiered approach a campaign to address wildfire prevention in Southern California would need to have.

The students continued by doing field research—visiting and documenting the very areas most impacted by wildfires. Students documented and researched native chaparral and drought-resistant areas to better understand why these areas have an exponentially higher risk of wildfire hazards than neighboring areas.

Outcomes / Projects:

Each student developed a solution for the USGS that included a unique identity system and marketing strategy. Students recognized that individuals use very different ways to digest information—from reading books to visiting websites to downloading mobile applications—and designed their campaigns to reflect this. All campaigns mindfully utilize real-time scientific data, in order to provide audiences with the most up-to-date information on their specific area. This “as-it-happens” approach proves crucial on a day-to-day basis as well as during a wildfire hazard.

THE WUIS:

A WUI is a frequently used term for those in fire science and management, and stands for the “Wildlife/Urban Interface,” or the borders where urban environments and the wild landscape mingle.  This campaign puts forth the concept of a person as a “WUI” or an individual living in a community that is situated on the edge of wildlife—in other words, an area that is at high risk of wildfires.  The WUI campaign is designed specifically for these communities, and envisioned as a grassroots effort to foster community pride in WUI residents and build collaboration around mitigating wildfire devastation in these most-vulnerable communities. Materials created include a brochure, newsletter and an “Are You A Wui?” bumper sticker. An interactive mobile application provides wildfire tips, reminders, contacts and news. This makes for a very personalized experience, which can be modified for individual neighborhoods.

In the summer and fall of 2011, USGS commissioned graphic design alumna Xian Shane to further develop her “Are you a Wui” campaign. The Designmatters and USGS teams, with faculty mentorship from Gloria Kondrup, worked closely with Xian to produce several updated additional outcomes of her original idea, including: WUI bumper stickers, buttons, a brochure and a website landing page for the campaign. Plans to implement these outcomes are underway with USGS over the next several months. To see the WUI website click here.

FIRESAFE:

The Firesafe identity imagines a partnership between the USGS and Southern California gardening stores.

Because planting the wrong types of plants in a wildfire-prone area can make a wildfire more volatile and spreading, this system influences home gardeners at the point of purchase, educating them on fire-resistant landscape options.

A brand logo and retail tags were designed for plants, with different color palates representing varying plant profiles—for instance, one plant might be fire resistant, another drought resistant and yet another a native plant. Some are a combination of all three. The value of these tags in garden centers is that they can raise awareness of wildfire prevention, reminding consumers that wildfires are an issue in all of Southern California that they can help mitigate.

In addition to plant markers inserted inside their pots, a mobile application was created advising which plants will work best for a particular area code.

FUSE:

The FUSE identity partners the USGS with an outdoor clothing company to produce fire-safe attire in order to promote awareness and generate funding for the cause.  FUSE stands for “Fire Understanding Saves Ecosystems.” The campaign could form partnerships with sportswear retailers to create and brand fire-resistant clothing made of such materials as nomex and templar. A heavy emphasis was placed on saving both people and the environment from wildfires; and also on making quality, durable and desirable clothing that can be worn in times of a wildfire hazard. Clothing tags display what traits a particular product features (such as being heat or fire resistant) and heavy emphasis is placed on producing functional clothing and accessories that are durable and stylish.

In addition to a book and a website around the identity, a series of posters and bus shelter graphics were also designed.

SCORCH:

SCORCH (Southern California Organization for the Research of Chaparral Hazards) is an institution identity aimed at coordinating the many agencies that partner to combat wildfires. With an “S” standing for SCORCH, the logo was designed in a way to represent both fire flames (in particular the Crown Fire which occurred last summer) and the grasslands present in the ecosystem. Brochures, outdoor banners, letterhead and a website were also created, with an emphasis on keeping the campaign scalable and cost-efficient.

WILDFIRE:

The Wildfire identity was designed for the digital world, engaging the public through digital spaces. Its primary goal is to educate users in situations where a growing wildfire hazard may be emerging.  The Wildfire application is based on a modular logo that was created to dynamically change (in size and color palette), in response to real-time wildfire hazard data. This technological and adaptable campaign seeks to push USGS to the public education forefront, as the primary authority on wildfires.

In addition to a mobile application, a desktop PC application and a public service announcement were also created, showcasing various elements of the campaign and its function.

MBR — MAJOR BURN REGION:

This campaign focused on developing regional governmental groups within an over-arching identity. A strategy for conventions and inter-agency communications was also created. MBR (“ember”) is tailored to be region-specific, providing people of a particular area with wildfire hazard news relevant to them. The identity and brand was designed with this in mind, taking care to present the program as knowledgeable and trustworthy. Mobile applications geared around GPS were created, showing live satellite imagery, illustrated maps, videos and live Twitter feeds specifically tailored to the location where the application was being used.  A website was created supporting region-specific branding. Ways in which a branding campaign could be implemented in an office environment were also explored.

CONTROL:

The Control identity sought to develop the wildfire scenario within the context of larger multi-hazards, developing multiple ways of communicating disaster information digitally.

Using primary colors, each representing a specific hazard—wildfire, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes—the campaign aimed to be simple yet informative. The website and materials produced took into account the entire series of multi-hazard scenarios, how these natural disasters are interrelated, and how to mitigate them.

“The biggest achievement students accomplished at the end of the term was getting the organizations quality images that they can use in their everyday work. Also, it was very valuable for them to get real-world experience.”

—Pato Hebert, Photography and Imaging Faculty

“Pato always tries to get us to go further and push for more. His approach taught me so much, and helped me get the images I needed for this project.”

— Michelle Kunz, Photography and Imaging student

Design Brief/Challenge:

Students were challenged to explore the use of imagery for a vital, but often underserved, sector—local nonprofit organizations.

Students were tasked with developing a sustained library of images while working in partnership with local nonprofit agencies. They were encouraged to push boundaries, confront convention, and create striking—even disruptive—imagery to serve the worthy causes represented by their nonprofit clients.

The goal was for students to experience working on issues-related projects, develop valuable skills of how to best work with their clients, grow their talents exponentially, and create compelling imagery that in its own unique way, enhances society at large.

To develop their body of work, students scheduled multiple shoots with their nonprofit clients, also participating in classroom group discussions, peer critiques and critical readings to help sharpen conceptual thinking. Guest presentations by seasoned professionals were used to help participants gain insight into trends and techniques that could help them execute their vision.

Process

The first matter of business was to identify the five organizations that would serve as the students’ clients. The prerequisite for the organizations was that they be doing interesting nonprofit work in the Pasadena area and represent a variety of community issues, ranging from environmental to educational endeavors. The selected organizations made presentations to the students, identified their needs, and were paired together based on the interest of the students.

Students were encouraged to approach the work in their own unique way; so different modalities were explored during the course, including documentary style, conceptual portraiture, promotional pieces, event coverage, and tableau photography presenting issues without the appearance of photojournalism.

Veering between fine art, commercial photography and a socially active lens, students were assisted in articulating their vision on three separate levels:

Contact With Client Organizations: This element was fundamental, allowing students to review websites, annual reports and other client collateral, allowing students to fully understand the mission and goals of the organization. Students made multiple site visits in order to more fully discern what the group needed by getting to know the organization and its staff. This added knowledge allowed students to respond to critiques they received in class and develop their images in new and unexpected ways.

Readings and Engaged Classroom: Instructor Pato Hebert employed a hybrid studio seminar approach—assigning readings by noted voices such as author David Levi Strauss, as well as work by photojournalists, art historians and authors—with the goal of helping students understand the ethics and implications of this type of work. Students also attended exhibits and talks at high-profile institutions such as LACMA and the Getty Center to cultivate a historical grounding in the documentary format, as well as develop a visual vocabulary and theoretical skills necessary to formulate their best work.

Critiques: Every two weeks, a critique with the instructor and peers was held, totaling six critiques. The purpose was to allow for course correction, refinement of technique and the exploration of alternative ideas while the work progressed. As Hebert commented to students during one class, “These crits are about where the spark is in your work—and where are you stuck.”

Questions raised during this time included: What truths are students attempting to tell about the organizations? How do people change when they are in front of—or behind—the camera? And is this an image that should be made, or is it exploitative?

While the class was not focused on technical aspects, critiques did raise tech- related issues, such as the use natural light, benefits and drawbacks of strobe lighting, and whether or not to explore large formats. One example was the situation that confronted student Shaina Kasanoff, who was working with the YWCA. She had shot with a large format camera, was concerned she had used too much tilt during a shoot, and wasn’t sure about a blur focus she had incorporated. During a class critique, Hebert advised that he liked Shaina’s direction of pushing her technique and the use of a large format camera, and recommended she refrain from switching to digital, as she had been considering.

Fellow students responded that they liked the blur effect and thought it successfully captured the subjects: adolescent girls in transition between youth and maturity. Ultimately, what students learned is that these choices should be determined not by preferred formats, but solely by what messages they were trying to convey through their work.

Overall Outcomes

An exhibition of all the students’ images, held at Art Center’s South Campus Public Programs Art Gallery on Dec. 13, was the culmination of a whole term’s worth of work, and a chance for the students, other Art Center students, faculty, the organizations and the community at large to view what had been accomplished first-hand.

Most students had never shown their work in a gallery setting before, so this marked a major first in their careers.

By the time the show arrived, students had mounted their projects; made tough decisions such as whether to use a single frame or triptychs, large imagery or small; and countless other creative choices. The evening was a great success, with all nonprofit organization representatives repeatedly commenting that the quality of the students’ work far exceeded their expectations.

Another distinct advantage of the class, according to Hebert, was the long-term nature of the class, which allowed students to evolve their work over a full term. He cited the example of student Michelle Kunz, who was working with Outward bound Adventures. “Michelle had good images, but with two weeks to go, she made a huge breakthrough as her visual poetry caught fire.”

“The last day when I went to shoot, I almost didn’t go,” said Kunz. “I could have got by with the images I had, but that’s when I got the images I ultimately used. It was a breakthrough shoot.”

This project has been such a wonderful collaboration between Art Center, the Watts community and St. John’s church. We are so very honored to have been a part of this.

— Pastor Royce Porter, St. John’s United Methodist Church

Students came into this studio without any preconceived notions. They walked the campus, got a sense of this community and spiritual center, went to the drawing board and came back with some great ideas.

— Edgar Arceneaux, Watts House Project

Design Brief/Challenge

The historic Watts neighborhood in south Los Angeles is an area of the city filled with a rich history, but also a troubled legacy of disenfranchisement. This compelling combination made Watts an inspired choice for this Designmatters-sponsored project, recognizing both the rich cultural firmament of the area as well as the opportunity to address perceived negatives that could be diminished through creativity and vision.

Liaising with one of the community’s most important cultural assets—the Watts House Project (WHP), a collaborative artwork focused on neighborhood redevelopment—participants were able to quickly secure access to a meaningful way of working the community. The first step was assisting the WHP’s executive director, artist and Art Center graduate Edgar Arceneaux create an ambitious program for students that would not only be relevant in context and form, but also begin the process of redefining the community by asserting its cultural attributes and capacity to enrich the city at large. In short, the goal articulated by Arceneaux and the mission he conveyed to students was to make as big an impact as possible on the neighborhood. The challenge would come in defining what that would look like.

It was determined that the focal point of the students’ efforts should be St. John’s United Methodist Church, an 85-year-old neighborhood institution just a brief walk from the famous Watts Towers, a collection of Gaudi-like spires created with recycled bits of bottles and glass almost a century ago by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia.

Process

A vital community space with tremendous potential to engage a neighborhood in transition from predominantly African-American to also including a large population of Latino immigrants, the church was determined to be the ideal venue to spark change and serve as a framework for the students’ creative vision. Arceneaux and students, along with faculty Dave Bailey and Alexandra Grant, met with the church’s pastor, Royce Porter, during an initial discovery process designed to identify needs and determine exactly where the students’ talents could be best applied.

Ultimately, four projects were identified, and student teams with team leaders were assigned to each. The projects included:

• An art exhibition utilizing the church’s community area as a gallery space
• A makeover of the church’s bell tower to create a unifying symbol
• A garden to enhance the church’s public space
• A redesign of the church’s website

Once the projects had been identified, the next step was to determine their scope, available budgets and plan of execution, as the goal was to have everything completed in just on term, at the end of which the students’ work would be presented to the community during an art exhibit.

During a meeting held under a tree in the shadows of the Watts Towers, Arceneaux instructed students to focus on what felt organic to them, incorporating what already existed on site.

Each team was encouraged to explore its own distinct vision, mindful of real world limitations and balancing big ambitions with small budgets. Following is a snapshot of each team’s creative journey:

Art Exhibit

In addition to the challenge of curating the show, a first-time exercise for all students involved, the very elemental question of whether or not the show needed a theme had to be addressed and discussed. Students discussed if a theme was needed—wouldn’t the fact this was a fist-time endeavor be enough?

Faculty member Alexandra Grant advised that a theme would not only better define the show and attract appropriate art, it would also open possibilities that students hadn’t yet imagined, such as creative interactions with the space itself. Various themes were discussed including family, Los Angeles and even animals. Following these in-depth discussions, the collaborative art project was finally titled Watts Art? and the show it would present would be 34,640 Watts: A Show About Light.

Another issue that had to be addressed was the short window of time left to organize the show, to be held December 19. This meant the work submitted would necessarily be pieces already created by the artists, so selecting the right theme would be especially important.

Using the theme of light, students were then able to reach out to a wide array of artists including Art Center students, community members and accomplished professional artists to secure pieces for the show.

Discussions also produced the decision to include music and dance to more fully engage the audience.

Bell Tower Project

The bell tower project involved transforming the church’s bell tower—an unused and somewhat derelict space—into a symbolic beacon to be seen by all of the community.

Students initially presented Pastor Royce with a working scale model of the tower so he could visualize the type of light and color treatment they proposed. Cost also came into play, as a significant aspect of the students’ challenge was actually executing the project on a tight budget. The first iteration involving materials, such as sheets of plexiglass and a dome of broken glass designed to reflect and refract light, ultimately gave way to a simpler version in which installed lights in the tower could be programmed to emit various colors. During the installation process, students also realized that age, deterioration and resident pigeons were obstacles that would need to be overcome in order to successfully complete the project.

Website Project

The website team tasked themselves with creating a website that was much more than simply a listing of church features. Instead, the decision was made to focus on evoking a sense of community. With input from Pastor Royce, who envisioned the site as a gateway to the Watts community, students set out to create a digital gathering place connecting residents and their interests.

The team undertook all aspects of the site build, including deciding on an appropriate look (the consensus was that less is more), creating page layouts and mock-ups, negotiating with Web designers, researching content management systems, and creating a tutorial to help future webmasters. Other tasks undertaken included nuts-and-bolts site issues such as harvesting images, and site content.

These efforts were all directed at raising awareness of the church and neighborhood as a vital arts community through the website.

Public Garden Landscaping

While proving to be challenging on multiple levels, the garden-landscaping project nonetheless became a great testing ground for creativity and flexibility adjusting to real-world issues, namely cost and man-hours. What was originally envisioned as a larger park space created from a parking lot had to be re-imagined as a smaller landscaping project due to prohibitive costs. The new landscaping effort involved not just the vision of designing the appealing placement of native plants, but demanded that students go far beyond their normal creative skill-sets, getting “down and dirty” digging, moving sod and breaking cement with a jackhammer.

Publicity

Finally, to raise overall awareness of the upcoming show, posters were created and posted around the Art Center campus, and a press release was written and distributed to the media.

Overall Outcome

The inspiration and work of the students and faculty culminated on a rainy winter Sunday, marking the end of the term and the opening of the exhibition 34,640 Watts, A Show About Light. On this day, the church’s community areas were transformed into a lively gallery space housing the work of everyone from a youthful community member with aspirations to be an artist, to accomplished Art Center graduates. All had embraced the curatorial concept of light, and in the process, metaphorically shone a light on Watts—proving that positive things indeed happen there. And while the 34,640 Watts exhibit served as the unifying center of the overall presentation that day, it shared the spotlight with the achievements of all the teams.

Well-attended by Art Center students, graduates, faculty, outside artists and Watts residents, the Watts Art? event brought together a wide range of attendees and artwork. Comprised of 32 pieces ranging from video installations to portrait photography of community members, the exhibition occupied multiple rooms on both floors of the church.

One of the highlights of the exhibition was an untitled series dominating a corner of the church’s auditorium created by lifelong Watts resident Judson Powell, co-founder of the Watts Towers Art Center. The prominent display of Powell’s fragmented mirrored glass artwork was a graphic demonstration of the lengths to which students went to involve community members in a substantive way. In addition to the visual arts on display, a student interpretive dance performance also entertained attendees.

During the show, the instructor overseeing the project, Dave Bailey, offered his insights. “The main thing is that I am very proud of the students,” he explained. “They all put far more into this class than ever expected. They had to put aside things like concerns about their own technique and instead work collaboratively, outside their media and comfort zone. They really put their hearts into it.”

A student curator, Luisa Aguilar, spoke about the challenges and rewards from a student’s perspective. “So many things we had to deal with in the class were unexpected,” she said. “There was always a surprise, but we always found a solution. Something else I didn’t expect was even though I had a piece in the show; I almost forgot it was here. I realized the most important piece here is the show itself.”

Students at the show also expressed gratitude to St. John’s pastor and the church community for sharing their space, and simply for the opportunity to apply their talents in a real-world setting. They shared their hope that in the future, other students could benefit from the foundation they had built there.

The show included the debut of the now-complete landscaped garden, which beyond just beautifying a neglected public-facing area, also met a deeper goal of creating a literal and metaphorical connection between the secular playground/parking area and the sacred space of the church’s entrance. The newly landscaped area also now serves the practical purpose of discouraging activities like tagging by creating natural barriers and reinforcing the connectedness of the entire church campus.

Viewing the garden, another student involved in the program, Maria Holland, reflected that the most important lesson for her was the “idea that in art, there isn’t a beginning an end—these are just two parts of a process that continue forever.”

The Watts Art? program came to a successful close that evening with a symbolic lighting of St. John’s bell tower. As the sun went down and the time designated to light the tower approached, the December rains took a brief break. In front of a large crowd gathered outside, Pastor Royce then proclaimed, “Let there be light!” and to cheers and applause. A palette of changing colored lights illuminated the bell tower, signaling the realization of Watts Art? and bringing to light the efforts of the students and community.

This Environmental Design-led studio developed visionary solutions to address the Graying of the Baby Boom Generation.

The collaboration between Art Center and Tokyo’s Tama Art University reaches back to the early 1980s, when a group of exchange students from Tama came to Art Center. The exchange of students continued over the years, and in 2006, the Pacific Rim joint project was launched. The project required design students of the two institutions to collaborate on research and practical work related to both global and local themes such as natural disasters, sustainability and workspace.

Aging Desires is the sixth international studio addressing the common problem of an aging society, and how to successfully respond to the needs and desires of an aging generation.

Over the next five years, one in every five Americans will be between the ages of 50 and 64. By 2030, these numbers will double to more than 71 million. This “graying” of the Baby Boom generation is inevitable. With each new year, Boomers—78 million children born the two decades after World War II—move closer to retirement age and toward numerous related health issues ranging from Alzheimer’s to proper nutrition.

In Japan, older people are now outnumbering children for the first time. There are 19.54 million Japanese over the age of 65, while those under 15 number just 19.49 million. While every industrialized country faces this problem, Japan’s situation is by far the most severe. Japan currently has fewer than half the workers per retiree that it had in 1997—a mere 2.5 people of working age for every pensioner. It is likely that in the early 21st century, Japan will have fewer than two people at work for every retiree.

Boomers have been famous for their desire to stay or at least act young. In our project we needed to explore what their future might hold.

— David Mocarski, Chair, Environmental Design

All of us at Keiro Senior HealthCare were honored to be included in this cross-cultural project. We were very impressed with the research that all the teams did. The students really “got it” in terms of the evolving needs of Boomers.

— Dianne Kujubu Belli, Keiro Senior HealthCare 
Chief Administrative Officer

Design Brief

The goal for this transdisciplinary studio was to create design interventions focused on the realm of healthy aging. Students worked in teams to develop environments created to improve the quality of life for this aging generation in both Japan and the U.S. Examining a wide range of social issues, students envisioned solutions for healthy living, both at home and in assisted care living facilities, designing with an eye to the future.

Research Process

Key to the design process was for students to spend time researching both cultures, addressing the different social and health issues involved, and being exposed to opportunities to conduct first-hand research with this population and forecast trends for healthy aging. Designmatters facilitated access for the teams to do field research and visit a spectrum of facilities, which included the Keiro Senior HealthCare Center, the largest non-profit healthcare organization serving the Japanese-American community in Southern California.

A Designmatters panel with experts from Keiro, the USC Davis School of Gerontology, and Vital Research, a leading consultancy that provides survey development and statistical analysis for aging, was key in anchoring the issues the class would tackle.

The panel discussion offered an overview about the wide range of social issues, desires, barriers and fears as we age and touched upon trends in the environmental gerontology and technological innovation in aging that will enable older adults to “add life to their years,” in the words of Dr. Aaron Hagedorn.

Projects/ Outcomes:

Students set out to create innovative design solutions to improve the quality of life for this aging generation. The projects share a common aspiration to broaden older adults’ participation in the community and reach self-actualization at the end of life.

Tekio

Tekio means “adapt.” The idea behind Tekio was that Boomers would be happier—and healthier—if they can age in the comfort of their own homes. With this in mind, the team created a modular, functional living space with minimal parts that could easily accommodate the aging process. Utilizing intuitive technology, they created a functional living space focusing on the various short-, mid- and long-term needs of its inhabitants.

Vive

This team addressed American eating habits, and socialization in the Japanese culture. The response to both? A mobile organic food truck. The truck could provide the Boomers with healthy food, cooking classes, nutritional education, and a chance to socialize with others. Tables, tablecloths and other items would make the experience both fun and social for Boomers, while also helping them live healthy lives.

Empowered Journey

Through research, this team learned that, unlike earlier generations, Boomers still have many personal aspirations beyond retirement. Therefore, the approach they took was to create an abstract, online gathering place, where dreams can still come true through a support network. Empowered Journey is a place that supports the rich and full lives of Baby Boomers and their families. Here they can do the various activities, like learning languages or taking yoga classes. It’s a workshop to learn, a place to create, a marketplace to sell, a place to gather and a place to think and aspire. The website creates a network of support, enabling users to stay connected to their community and the world despite whatever mental and physical challenges they might face.

Hare

Hare is a general gardening environment created just for Baby Boomers, providing activities such as gardening classes and a farmer’s market. The goal was to create a viable community celebrating healthy aging and quality of life. Students transformed a vacant building into the garden center, creating a regular farmer’s market as well numerous gardening-related products and tools. Tools were designed in an ergonomic form, featuring T-shaped handles and straight angles, conducive to the aging gardener. Classes and workshops on gardening were developed to foster both activity and socializing opportunities. Hare, which means “a special day” in Japanese, also has a website connecting both U.S. and Japanese generations and cultures, offering products and gardening tips and ultimately instilling in users a sense of accomplishment. The group felt gardening together, both physically and online, could create an atmosphere of compassion and understanding in an innovative way.

We learned so much about a very complex dilemma. Students delivered four completely different attitudes and directions as to how they might approach it as designers. It was fascinating seeing what came from this collaboration.

— James Meraz, Associate Professor, Environmental Design

The result of the students’ work was powerful. They leveraged the strengths of both cultures to create sensitive yet practical solutions that would undeniably make our world a better place to age.

— Robert Ball, Environmental Design

Art Center College of Design, NCIIA, 2010

view NCIIA conference site here

]]> http://www.designmattersatartcenter.org/pub/designmatters-case-studies-design-education-methodologies-as-a-tool-for-social-innovation/feed/ 0 http://www.designmattersatartcenter.org/psa/the-arkstorm-a-short-film/ http://www.designmattersatartcenter.org/psa/the-arkstorm-a-short-film/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 23:36:25 +0000 designmatters http://www.designmattersatartcenter.org/?post_type=psa&p=2298 Created by Art Center alumnus Theo Alexopoulos for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) this short motion graphic film explores the very real potential for a catastrophic winter storm in California, which scientists are calling The ARkStorm. The film was featured in January 2011 at the opening of the USGS ARkStorm Summit in Sacramento, an event which convened emergency managers, regulatory and scientific agencies, policymakers, business leaders, and other experts from the public and private sector to forge a plan-of-action for addressing and mitigating this expected storm scenario.

PCI is a San-Diego based international health and humanitarian aid organization dedicated to saving lives and building healthy communities.  They work around the world to prevent disease, improve community health and promote sustainable development.

Winner of the Art Directors Club Gold Cube Award in the Interactive Division, Online Content Category (2011)

Winner of the Cannes Young Directors Award (June, 2011)

Oxford University Press, 2011

The MIT Press, 2006

Designed/Animated by Gurkan Erdemli and James Kim with Ian Abando, Nadia Tsuo, Jason Yeh, Micael Klok and Elsa Chang.

Faculty Advisor: Ming Tai, Director, Motion Design Department

Directed by Elizabeth Bayne, Student, Broadcast Cinema

Faculty Advisor: Monte  Bramer, Faculty, Film Department

Directed by Robert McLendon

Produced by Elisa Ruffino

Directed by Robert McLendon and produced by Elisa Ruffino

Designed by Ludmil Trenkov

Designed by Sebastian Bettencourt

Directed by James Mann and produced by Elisa Ruffino

The Organization of American States (OAS)

Museum of the Americas

Washington, DC
Spring 2011

UNICEF

New York
Summer 2010
View
Dustin’s film

Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)

Washington, DC
Spring 2010

International Rescue Committee

New York City
Fall 2009

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Bangkok, Thailand
Summer 2009

Academy of Educational Development (AED)

Social Change Design Unit
Washington, DC
Spring 2009

VIEW MORE

UNFPA

New York
Media and Communications
Fall 2008

GE/Innovate 2011
View Website

April 16-17, 2011
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

Designers and geo scientists? That seemed to be the unasked question on the minds of the engineers, policy makers, meteorologists, emergency managers, and other participants at the  US Geological Survey’s ARkStorm Summit in Sacramento on January 13 and 14, 2011.

As you might have heard, Designmatters has been closely working with the USGS for a number of years. I was in my sixth term when I was introduced to the concept of social impact design offered at Art Center. It was a Designmatters sponsored ID Systems class for the USGS’ Multi-Hazards program, specifically on wildfires in California. About a month into my term, in October, Art Center hosted a designstorm for the Geological Survey’s ARkStorm Flood Project. Elisa Ruffino, Designmatters producer, was kind enough to extend an invitation to my class, in the effort to help my peers and myself get a deeper insight into the USGS and their mission. I willingly accepted the challenge and dove straight into an intense full day brainstorming session with authorities in emergency rescue, urban planning, scientists, federal departments, and more.

At the end of my term, Gloria Kondrup and Sean Donahue’s Desigmatters/ID Systems class was a success. Elisa then offered me the opportunity to travel up to Sacramento and join the team of faculty and alumni that were working with the USGS on the 2-day ARkStorm Summit. The summit was basically a giant version of the previous designstorm held in October, but with a lot more coordination, facilitation and improvisation necessary to keep a very large crowd of scientists, managers, etc. in “participation mode” for two consecutive days.

The days started off early, with we facilitators meeting at 6:30 am in the lobby to discuss the organization of the day’s event, ending with last minute corrections/re-planning at night in the lobby, and a final sigh of relief when finally going to bed.

The two-day conference was an amazing and unique event to participate in.  Seeing our team of six people running around, documenting, organizing, participating, outreaching and so much more to ensure the success of building “Paths to Action” among the Summit’s 200+ participants, was a great learning challenge–with many praising Art Center’s visual communication and ideation methods.

From this experience I will take great insight into a very large part of the science community, and its skills in management and organization—but also an insight into a world almost completely foreign to the power of design.. It was a great experience, giving me new skills and understanding that help me grow, and which I will be able to use in the future. I’m very thankful I was given the opportunity by Art Center College of Design and Desigmatters to take part in this project and working with some amazing people! Thank you Elisa, Julie, Sherry, Josh, and Chris for taking me on board.

Mariana Amatullo
Santiago, December 9, 2010

The book is available for purchase here

Participants Bios
Case Studies
Read Symposium Report in Change Observer

Designed by Maria Moon

“For some students, this class was the first time they had thought about cervical cancer. They’ve come a long way. This group is exceptionally self-motivated, spirited and inquisitive. For Allison and me, this class was less about teaching than it was enjoying the process. We’ve learned so much from these students.”

— Elena Salij, Advertising Faculty

Design Brief/Challenge

A leading cause of death among Latinas in Los Angeles, cervical cancer is a preventable disease. The incidence of cervical cancer is projected to double, perhaps even triple, in the coming decades given current population growth and trends.

Unlike some forms of cancer, we know what causes cervical cancer—human papillomavirus, known as HPV—and there are vaccines available for preteen girls that can prevent it. The problem is that, for a variety of social, economic and political reasons, acceptance of the HPV vaccine in the Latina community is low. As a result, effective means of intervention are in urgent need.

Studio sponsors from USC Keck School of Medicine, USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and USC Annenberg School of Communications presented a challenge to students: Create both a traditional and non-traditional communications program to increase acceptance of the HPV vaccine among preteen girls, and the mothers who must give their permission for it, living in the underserved neighborhoods of East L.A.

Envisioned as a companion piece to Es Tiempo—last summer’s critically acclaimed, USC-sponsored Designmatters campaign designed to persuade Latinas in underserved Los Angeles neighborhoods to get screened for cervical cancer—Para Nuestras Hijas sought to duplicate its sister campaign’s successes while targeting a dramatically different demographic.

Research and Project Development

The first phase of the project was a period of extensive research, during which students were briefed on the medical and social aspects of cervical cancer. They then visited public schools in East L.A., meeting with clinicians and school district administrators to better understand the society and environment where their campaign would be reaching.

They conducted “girl-on-the-street” interviews with preteens, with the aim of better understanding how girls this age think, how they spend their time, and what that they are interested in. Students gained insight into the common barriers to HPV vaccine acceptance by meeting with Annenberg School doctoral students, who had conducted focus groups with the mothers of preteen girls.

“I’ve always been interested in social innovations for change, but what stood out about this class was that it was focused on a problem that’s very real, very local and something that we can address now.”

— Chi Hey Lee, Graphic Design Student

OUTCOMES

Working in cross-disciplinary teams, the students of Para Nuestras Hijas created three campaigns:

CLUB CASA

CLUB CASA taps into the sociology and mindset of preteen girls, as observed during school visits and through street research. Students found that these girls often look to each other for affirmation, acceptance, encouragement and empowerment. This means they’re far more likely to accept—and even ask for—the HPV vaccine if they see their peers receiving it. Club Casa is a virtual “girls’ club” committed to empowerment and healthy living. When a preteen joins the online group, she receives membership materials and communications encouraging her to get the HPV shots. She also receives membership swag such as branded T-shirts and bracelets, serving as public affirmation of her personal commitment to fighting cervical cancer by getting vaccinated. This in turn encourages her peers to become vaccinated as well. Team: Jon Farrell, Chi Hey Lee and Jupone Wang.

3-2-1

3-2-1 was inspired by a troubling statistic: many girls get the first of the three-shot HPV series, but only a small percentage receive the required second and third shots. The objective of the 3-2-1 program is to encourage girls to follow through with the entire vaccination series. The centerpiece of the program is a fun, preteen-friendly incentive system, rewarding points to participants for a range of desirable behaviors: learning about HPV, posting photos to the 3-2-1 website, having their vaccination permission slips signed by mom, urging their friends to get the vaccine and, of course, getting the HPV vaccine itself. Inspirational messages are conveyed to girls through the campaign website, postcards, email and text messages for the six-month duration of the vaccine series, and points awarded increase as the participant continues with the series. Points can then be redeemed for a range of gifts and prizes, available both online and from a print catalog. Team: Angy Che, Mitos Corpuz and Melissa Ploysophon.

ABUELA KNOWS

ABUELA KNOWS was inspired by the focus group finding that mothers are often reluctant to allow their daughters to get the HPV vaccination because they fear they will be criticized by their own mothers—the family’s abuela (grandmother)—oftentimes the central authority in Latino households. In response to this mindset, students created a character named Abuela, the all-knowing, kind and never-questioned family matriarch. Just as she gives sage advice on everything from fixing a car to mending a broken heart, Abuela is featured in a series of videos, posters and brochures, urging her daughters to allow her granddaughters to receive the HPV vaccine. Team: Jeffrey Benavides, Nate Eggert and Jorge Garduno.
Following a midterm presentation to sponsors and expert advisors, the consensus was that all three campaigns had tremendous potential and should be fully developed. “All three were so promising that we decided to pursue them all,” said Sheila Murphy, professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “I was a little concerned at first, because that meant dividing the energy of the class, but it worked out beautifully. We ended up with three very different, very plausible campaigns.”
The decision to pursue all three was an exciting development for the students—no projects would be set aside—but also a daunting one in that they would have to complete aspects of the campaigns that fell out of their own particular discipline. “It was an intense experience,” said Jeffrey Benavides, a Film student who worked on Abuela Knows. “It was much more than just filming; we also had to figure out all the printed matter. And writing content that’s supposed to lead somebody to a specific action was also challenging.”

Next Steps:

Robert Haile, professor at USC’s Keck School of Medicine—described by the class as the “wizard” behind the campaign’s genesis—was impressed by the campaigns that emerged from the class. “I had very high expectations. The Es Tiempo campaign grew out of a similar studio, and it’s been very well received to the audiences we’ve presented it to,” said Haile. “I was expecting this to be of similar high quality, and I wasn’t disappointed.”

The goal of USC partners is to develop an implementation strategy for the Para Nuestras Hijas campaign in 2011.

Mariana Amatullo with Jon Kolko, (Austin Center for Design), Erica Estrada (Standford d. School, and Dennis Littky (Big Picture).

Panel with 4 speakers, representing alternative educational models at various levels, present their views of the biggest challenges facing higher education, followed by workshop session.

Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, CA, Oct 4 – 6, 2010

Designed by Stefan Sagmeister

“There is a different level of engagement when you are working with design students—their enthusiasm and energy are palpable. Their perspective on this project, as well as our organization, was both refreshing and inspiring. You can’t find this type of feedback anywhere else.”

—Shawn Ruggeiro, Director of Institutional Advancement, PCI

About Project Concern International (PCI)

Project Concern International (PCI) is a San Diego based international health and humanitarian aid organization dedicated to saving lives and building healthy communities. PCI works around the world to prevent disease, improve community health and promote sustainable development.

The PCI 50th Anniversary Campaign Designmatters Transdisciplinary Studio (TDS) is the final phase of a two-part project. In Spring Term 2010, a dedicated studio focused on an overall rebranding of the organization. Through the work of the class, PCI recently changed its name from Project Concern International to Positive Community Impact, as was recommended in the outcomes of this TDS. This second phase focused on developing a visual communications programs promoting PCI’s 50th anniversary, both recognizing its past accomplishments and looking to revitalize the future of the organization over the next 50 years.

Design Brief/Challenge

For 50 years, PCI has worked with underserved communities around the globe finding sustainable solutions to their most fundamental needs such as health care, clean water and economic development. What sets PCI apart from other humanitarian aid organizations is their approach—they focus on lasting impact, rather than charity. Last year, PCI assisted 4.5 million people worldwide, providing life-saving vaccines, clean water and educational programs that aim to teach people how to break the cycle of poverty.

Despite their rich history, PCI felt a need to expand public awareness of their work and mission, and to reinvigorate a very loyal donor base in both celebrating 50 years of accomplishments and also looking ahead. As a result, they challenged Art Center students to create a modern, engaging campaign that could renew the organization’s communications strategy around its 50th anniversary. Students were tasked with celebrating and promoting PCI’s 50th year, while crafting a new and fresh identity system to re-engage supporters and attract new ones as well.

Research and Project Development

To gain an accurate and thorough understanding of PCI, their mission and their challenges, students underwent a period of extensive research that included key consultation with various staff, board members and stakeholders, including beloved PCI founder Dr. James Turpin in San Diego. They also performed extensive interviews with a diverse sampling of PCI donors, to gain a better understanding of who donates to PCI and why, as well as outside perceptions of the organization.

Students also did a great deal of research regarding other international humanitarian aid organizations, identifying those similar to PCI and sharing the same donor base. As a result of this research, students were careful to avoid the commonly used clichés of international humanitarian aid organizations when creating this new identity for PCI. They found through their research that many aid campaigns focus on what’s wrong—death, disease, poverty and the lack of much-needed services. Rather than focus on the problems that PCI faces in the field, the team chose to focus on the solutions PCI finds for these problems.

In August, a group of photography and film students traveled to Zambia with PCI to observe their work in the field, meet those they serve and heavily document the success stories of the organization in the region. PCI’s Director of Institutional Advancement Shawn Ruggeiro was integral to the implementation of this trip to Africa, travelling with the students providing them the access needed to get the very best footage. Students filmed and photographed the beneficiaries to capture their unique stories, which will be featured in a promotional video to be revealed at the 50th anniversary launch in November 2010.

What better way to celebrate 50 years than to visit PCI in the field, see the people they serve, and say thank you to their supporters? Students felt that by thanking advocates for their backing over the past five decades, they would stand out from other organizations and provide an uplifting and positive message.

After much brainstorming and deliberation, the students set out to create new solutions for PCI, including a consistent look and message that would be integral to a successful reinvention. Students determined that the campaign should be modular and easily customizable, depending on where and how it is being used.

Outcomes

The Thank You campaign is a comprehensive visual identify encompassing a variety of communications vehicles including film, print and the Web. The primary objective is to celebrate PCI’s five decades of changing the world and saving lives. The campaign was designed to give PCI a unique voice in an increasingly competitive landscape.

With many voices making up PCI, the materials were created with the idea of showcasing the different constituencies in mind. The term “Thank You” is the device through which various stakeholders—donors, beneficiaries, organization members—address the many facets of PCI. The donor thanks the beneficiary for their profound strength. The beneficiary thanks the organization for teaching them sustainable change. The organization thanks the donor for their continued support. These different voices and stories create a unified campaign.

Students created a highly emotional visual style relying on photography as a main focal point. The powerful photographs used were taken by photographer Jeffery Brown in Africa, India, Mexico and the other regions in which PCI operates. The imagery used was carefully selected as being intimate, but not gratuitous.

A modern palette of gray, yellow and blue was used, and a series of icons were created that are used throughout all materials. These circular icons were very simple, making them immediately easy to decipher—a loaf of bread represents food, a medical bag represents health care, a faucet represents clean water. These reoccurring icons serve as a linking mechanism between vehicles.

The phrase “Thank You” was repeated throughout the mediums: Thank You for being part of our community. Thank You for education. Thank You for health care. Not only is the term “Thank You” an impactful, unexpected angle for PCI to use (and one that potential donors will remember), but it is easily translated  into many languages.

Another important aspect of the Thank You campaign is that its components are modular, easily adaptable and changeable. PCI can customize the components as needed for a particular region, audience, or as the organization adapts over time. The simple design allows for the text, photographs and icons to be easily changed and swapped for whatever needs the materials are addressing.

“The value in a project like this one, bringing several different disciplines together, is showing the students how creativity can, and should, be a collaborative effort. The end result is so much more powerful when it was executed in a united fashion.”

—Tyrone Drake, Graphic Design Faculty

Projects

Students were informally divided into five working teams—print, online, environmental graphics, promotional items and video and photography. They produced a wide variety of work, of which each component can have various uses.

The online team structured the site around “50 Years, 50 Faces,” focusing on the individuals making up PCI and who they serve. Their simple and clean design was quite striking when paired with tightly-cropped portraits of various PCI beneficiaries.

The print team produced a variety of items including a calendar and posters. A 50th anniversary calendar was created focusing on the dramatic photography and using the modernized palette. A multi-panel brochure continued the look and feel, keeping those PCI serve as the focal point. Both can be given to a variety of constituencies.

Double-sided posters were created featuring a single, black-and-white image of a beneficiary on the front, and on the back, a map of where the photo was taken along with applicable icons that quickly relay to the viewer what PCI does in that area (water, medical care, education.) These posters, due to their size and design, could easily be used as gifts to donors and supporters.

Outdoor banners were identified by the environmental graphics team as the easiest and most effective method in which to communicate to a large, external audience. Larger-than-life photographs of PCI’s different constituencies present the different stories of PCI. Various Thank You messaging—”Thank you for being strong,” “Thank you for letting me grow with you”—create a poignant and easily accessible message about the group and its mission. These banners were also made into extra-large, double-sided street banners.

Smaller, banner flags were also created, using a simpler design approach. Featuring a limited palette, 50th anniversary logo and icons, their flexible design and smaller size makes them perfect for event signage.

Promotional items such as t-shirts and bags were created by the promotional items team, using the icon series and various “Thank You” tag lines—”Thank you for health care,” “Thank you for education.”

A series of wall projections created by the video team will be displayed at PCI’s 50th anniversary gala. Using simple imagery such as a fork or book, the projections show a specific problem PCI is tackling, such as lack of food and education.

The” solutions” that PCI provides to these problems were presented as projections into recycled water. Field images of playing, happy children were projected into the water and accompanied by a soundtrack of laughing, playing children.

Another set of projections focuses on the Thank You theme, projecting life-sized individuals thanking PCI supporters for their help over the years.

Art Center and PCI are ideal partners. We have been consistently awed and surprised by the energy, intelligence and creative output of the students here.

- George Guimaraes, President and CEO, PCI

Project Concern International: New Identity Design

In Spring 2010, a class of 14 Art Center students was commissioned by Project Concern International (PCI) to create a new graphic identity for the organization. The class consisted of Graphic Design, Illustration and Advertising majors, as well as two Graphic Design instructors. This TDS is the first of a two-part corporate identity design and 50th anniversary campaign project for PCI. The second phase of the project involves a different group of students designing a wide range of materials for PCI’s 50th anniversary.

Design Brief

The goal of this transdisciplinary studio was to conceive and develop a multi-component branding and communications strategy for PCI, creating a campaign that would not only embody PCI’s core values and operating principles, but help audiences imagine the significance of PCI during the next 50 years, reaffirming its importance in the ever-evolving global landscape.

Students were encouraged to pursue a wide range of solutions ranging from new designs that would use the existing organization name to the possibility of renaming and rebranding the organization completely. Students worked in three teams: Team Humankind, Team Positive Change and Team PCI+. Branding was implemented into a range of contexts from print materials to vehicle covers to websites.

Final presentations involved an array of design options for the organization, from which PCI will choose of several quality options to adopt into implementation.

About Project Concern International (PCI)

Project Concern International’s mission is to prevent disease, improve community health and promote sustainable development. Motivated by concern for the world’s most vulnerable children, families and communities, Project Concern International (PCI) envisions a world where abundant resources are shared, communities are able to provide for the health and well-being of their members, and children and families can achieve lives of hope, good health and self-sufficiency.

Working with Art Center students has been a priceless, insightful experience for our organization. We’re beyond pleased.

- Mark O’Donnell, Chief Operating Officer, PCI

Research and Project Development:

Students discussed the organization with several team members, donors and field staff in several countries where PCI operates, and also interviewed their target demographic as part of the research process. They also familiarized themselves with written materials provided by the organization to fully understand its mission, core philosophy and guiding principles.

Outcomes

Team Humankind emphasized the humanitarian approach of PCI and created an inspiration iconography as well as innovative communications strategy for bringing stories from the field into PCI’s donor outreach.  The crosshatch logo included the tag line, “Impacting Communities Through Compassion,” the tag line for the circle logo was “People>Communities>Impact” and the figure logo included a tag line of “Individuals Building Communities.”

Team Positive Change recommended changing PCI’s name to “Positive Change,” feeling it kept the brand equity of the existing name while highlighting the organization’s strength in building lasting impact in community empowerment, engagement and education. They created two logos for Positive Change: the loop and plus sign.

Team PCI+ created PCI’s new identity around the organization’s mission to address root causes of disease, malnutrition, and economic insecurity.  PCI empowers communities by providing the tools, training and resources needed to build healthy futures—and the PCI+ team aimed to reflect this in their branding strategies and proposed new name, “People, Communities, Impact.”

All three groups applied their brand identities to a wide range of applications, including business cards, emergency vehicles, bus shelters, fundraising materials and websites.

Following the close of the studio, a small team representing all three groups traveled to San Diego to make a special presentation to several PCI board members and executives.  A small team continues to work under Faculty Simon Johnston’s lead this summer term to finalize the new identity for the organization.   A new PCI studio, in which students will take the re-branding designs and apply them to a new range of materials, is underway this summer.

Samples from the campaign appear in the Project Gallery sidebar.

“Working with the PCI team and Designmatters provided me with the hands-on experience I strive for as a designer. It was an honor to participate in the design process and I look forward to the fruition of the hard work.”

Natalya Sariashvili, Graphic Design Student