TASK2: CLOSE READING

Task 2: close reading 

1. Summarise your library find in 100 words, please include one key quote from the text. Your quote should be Harvard referenced. 
2. Find two additional texts on the same theme – bring them to your next session.

Designing for Social Change:

Strategies for Community-Based Graphic Design

Book introduction 

This newest title in the design briefs series is a compact, hands-on guide for graphic design professionals who want to start helping communities and effectuating social change in the world. Author Andrew Shea presents ten strategies for successful community engagement, grounding each one in two real world case studies. The twenty projects featured in the book are by both design professionals and students and range from creating a map of services for the homeless community in Santa Monica, helping Chicago's Humboldt Park community by designing a website where donors can buy essential items for community members, to encouraging LA's Latina community to go for an annual PAP exam in an attempt to prevent cervical cancer through carefully designed posters, murals, and other material. Designing for Social Change is both an inspiration and a how-to book that encourages graphic designers everywhere to go out and do good with their work, providing them with the tools to complete successful projects in their communities. 

Summary and quote 

One of the crucial elements when creating a design for a social change is ‘immersion’.

“Immersion refers to any number of ways you may spend time with the community. For example, designers can immerse themselves by taking tours through a neighborhood, regularly visiting community leaders, conducting focus groups,3 and canvassing the community. Sometimes you may need to fade into the background and observe, while at other times you might need to work side by side with members of the community.” (Shea 2012, p. 12)

The role of a designer in a social change is to observe the community and know more about how people interact with each other and with their environment. It is important that we, designers, before designing, are aware of each and every detail of what is happening in the society, in order to proceed to the next step. It could be considered as a primary research, as designers are required to physically experience and get in contact with the target audience that they are designing for. 

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Shea, A. (2012) Designing for Social Change. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, p. 12.

Additional texts
What Design Can Do: Spark Social Change

https://99u.adobe.com/articles/55317/what-design-can-do-spark-social-change 

Design for Social Good: Visualising a Social Movement | Ending Sexual Harassment
https://piquant.ie/news/design-for-social-good/

TASK1: THEME?

1. what is interesting?
- fashion and styling 
- Hong Kong protests 

2. what is there to find out
- prints on clothes? 

3. how could you investigate on this? 
- 10 images 
- begin some initial research and reading 

ideas 
- graphic design and art? (difference? influencing each other?)
- film and graphic design? 
- fashion n styling and graphic design? (related?)
- tattoos n graphic design? 
- activism in Hong Kong 

Last year, I did editorial design for my COP topic. I thought I was interested in the field of editorial design, however, when it comes to the production and design part, I wasn't really into that. Therefore, I decided to try branding. I realised that I have been interested in branding and how a company build up their image and style. 

Apart from graphic design, I am really interested in fashion and styling. I wan't sure how I can link fashion and styling with graphic design, the only thing that I though of is graphic tees, different prints and patterns on fabric, and brand logos. Then I thought of linking them to branding and talk about how the logos and prints on their products build up their brand image. I could also do something about the comparison between high end fashion brands and streetwear brands. 

On the other hand, activism has been something that I am really interested in these days. As there is an ongoing protest in Hong Kong, I am really aware of the news about the protests. It has then arouse my curiosity as to how propaganda and media can carve one's perception on a protest, and the role of propaganda in protests. 

Also, I realised that during this intense protesting period in the past 6 months, there is a huge creative community behind the movement, producing large amount of propaganda to help raise awareness of the protest and to spread news. However, I also realised that the propaganda that were produced throughout the protest, most of them are being really subjective. 

So basically there are two directions that I would like to look at, 

1. the role of media in the fashion industry, 
2. and propaganda graphic design in social movements and activism/ activism graphic design 

I will probably go for the second one, as it is a topic that I am most interested in at the moment. The protest has been affecting people around me in different ways and I am really interested in the huge anonymous creative community behind the movement that have been a really important role throughout the protests. They have been mass producing different kinds of propaganda such as posters, flyers, banners, in order to spread news to not only people within Hong Kong, but also people all over the world.