Tuesday, 24 March 2020

CONCEPTUAL RESEARCH (WEBSITES AND BOOKS)

WEBSITES

- relationship between graphic design and protest over the past ten years.


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

GABI SCHAFFZIN (A portfolio of art and research) (https://utopia-dystopia.com/social-movement-information-design)

Design activism from the past to present: A critical analysis of the discourse (http://pdf.blucher.com.br.s3-sa-east-1.amazonaws.com/designproceedings/icdhs2016/04_016.pdf )

BOOKS (PRIMARY RESEARCH) 

1. Comic Art Propaganda: A Graphic History
Design academics and practitioners are facing a multiplicity of challenges in a dynamic, complex, world moving faster than the current design paradigm which is largely tied to the values and imperatives of commercial enterprise. Current education and practice need to evolve to ensure that the discipline of design meets sustainability drivers and equips students, teachers and professionals for the near-future. New approaches, methods and tools are urgently required as sustainability expands the context for design and what it means to be a 'designer'. Design activists, who comprise a diverse range of designers, teachers and other actors, are setting new ambitions for design. They seek to fundamentally challenge how, where and when design can catalyse positive impacts to address sustainability. They are also challenging who can utilise the power of the design process. To date, examination of contemporary and emergent design activism is poorly represented in the literature. This book will provide a rigorous exploration of design activism that will re-vitalise the design debate and provide a solid platform for students, teachers, design professionals and other disciplines interested in transformative (design) activism.

Design Activism provides a comprehensive study of contemporary and emergent design activism. This activism has a dual aim - to make positive impacts towards more sustainable ways of living and working; and to challenge and reinvigorate design praxis,. It will collate, synthesise and analyse design activist approaches, processes, methods, tools and inspirational examples/outcomes from disparate sources and, in doing so, will create a specific canon of work to illuminate contemporary design discourse. 

Design Activism reveals the power of design for positive social and environmental change, design with a central activist role in the sustainability challenge. Inspired by past design activists and set against the context of global-local tensions, expressions of design activism are mapped. The nature of contemporary design activism is explored, from individual/collective action to the infrastructure that supports it generating powerful participatory design approaches, a diverse toolbox and inspirational outcomes. This is design as a political and social act, design to enable adaptive societal capacity for co-futuring.

2. Designing for Social Change
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. 

3. Design (&) Activism : Perspectives on Design as Activism and Activism as Design

This is a book about how the worlds of design and activism (could) inspire each other. As Design and its conceptual, functional, aesthetic, speculative and interventional concepts inevitably affect our lives, it often actively interferes in common definitions, understandings and opinion making, which offers opportunities for ideological engagement (in a good or in a bad sense). The book focuses on theories and practices related to the role of Design in terms of addressing, provoking and creating political discourse. Starting from traditional forms of protest, visual languages of resistance, to new forms of digital participation, this will help us to better understand the rituals, structures and meanings of design activism in history and the present, clarifying that design is intrinsically social and supremely political. And it shall help us to derive arguments and examples for the transformative potential of future design (and) activism. 

Ideas development

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