Awareness Campaign
how can art influence action?
see extended entry for examples of my own work at the College of Design or read all this article [all the way to the end] http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/thinktank/peterhall.html
could a poster campaign raise awareness and propose solutions to large-scale problems (e.g. the viability of our governmental process, environmental sustainability, income disparities)?
what is the optimal balance between image and text to reach the largest population?
should a majority be targeted, or are individuals with specific characteristics need to start a social shift towards a new way of living (get some big guns before you start taking down the machine)?
I'm interested in collaborating on educational + inspirational graphics. Classmates [or others in our life] could serve as respondents to ideas, ensuring that the posters are educational and not obtuse, solution-oriented and not preachy. These graphics could be collaged, hand sketched, computer-designed, individual or group created. We have free color printing here at the College of Design, so money shouldn't be a problem...
Many times the design process is frustrating due to lack of feedback from others outside your realm of interest. This action reserach project could provide the opportunity to intersect with alternate populations and survey the impact of our posters (did you change your food-purchasing habits to include more locally grown produce? are you willing to commit to a reduction in household refuse: if so, by what percent?)...
Last year, my directed study with Dean Fisher on "Ethics - Sustainability - Implementation" resulted in an installation here at Rapson Hall. I wanted to find a way to put academic research into an applied application to share with others, and also engage them on a participatory level. As designers, we often analyze and critique the physical world around us, in order to support our own proposals for why our solutions would be better than what exists. As architects, we have a responsibility to ensure that the materials we use are not harmful at any stage of their process: extraction, manufacturing, distribution, application.
These interests merged into an installation that presented research on the topic with simple graphics to translate quantities into analogies that we better understand. In addition to national and local levels of cause-effect information, ways that others had "rethought" the idea of a waste product were displayed as examples: Download file It also presented studies done specific to our waste here at the College of Design (CDes), and had public comment boards for redesign and/or comments on what we could do differently. The ideas were then furthered by myself and other students, members of our postive action group Greenlight. I also took many proposals to the administration for formal programs and/or funding to work on these projects within CDes and the university.
Download a description of the project here. Download file
I am NOT recommending we use this process, but I do think that some type of poster or engagement campaign could be undertaken to respond to personality + site specifics as well as building or reliable sustainability facts. There are currently many rumors that are bandied about regarding what might be more environmental. We had some great discussions last week about the trash + recycling process here at the U. Would like to brainstorm ideas and share what I know of certain physical processes to get this project rolling!
What should we do, and where? ...let me know what you think! sw
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I'm in! This is something I am totally interested in working on. I have some experience in art - painting, drawing, collage, altered books. I am very interested in website and graphic design. --nan
Posted by: Nan Jahnke | February 19, 2008 04:39 PM
Mike Fink and I are two weeks into a conversation about arts education as a critical means by which to develop knowledge workers with skills for a conceptual age. I've taken to calling it "Grad Standards Plus" in my imagination over the past few days as an icon and a framework that includes arts as a core subject that makes a measurable improvement in individual student achievement.
We have talked about identifying the key people across the state for surveys and focus groups. One of the great challenges will be articulating the research-based findings in ways people can react against. What comes to your mind as you think about what you want to do, and this little bit of insight into a project that is also about the arts? Should we talk more? I like what you are doing, but am quite interested in this project's directly relationship to the cyclical change cycle of public policy, and how all the diverse stakeholder groups view their organizational change within that cycle that swirls them all. But wow, something tells me you may be the vehicle within which we test these concepts and findings in a totally fresh way that doesn't involve asking people to read a pile of disconnected research (and them ignore it).
To my way of thinking, we're trying to test the basic concept of arts education as a legitimate public value that can never exist in the marketplace in the same way, accessible to every child. That sure sounds like we need to explore the graphic treatment you're describing.
Thoughts? Wendy
Posted by: Wendy Wustenberg | February 26, 2008 04:12 AM