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Occupy Design – Building a Visual Language for the 99 Percent

Occupy Design – Building a Visual Language for the 99 Percent

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Occupy Design is a grassroots project that connects designers with demonstrators in the Occupy Together movement. The goal of the project is to create freely available visual graphics around a common graphic language to unite the 99%.   A common set of used universal icons, logistical signs, and infographics can help support the communication of the movement’s messages and the data surrounding them across the world.

The Occupy Design site has a gallery of existing designs, a how-to guide for demonstrators, a graphic toolkit for designer who want to contribute graphics for the project and a interactive form for the community to suggest ideas for designers.

The project was created in less than 24 hours in October by a team of designers, programmers, artists, and demonstrators in San Francisco as part of three concurrent creative hackathons across the country to support Occupy Together. During the planning process, the team spoke with demonstrators who described their needs.  The three main areas of the project are infographic protest signs, logistical signs, and visual icons around social justice themes. The focus on infographics is to support bringing graphic representation of statistical evidence to the front and center on the ground – rather than just on computer screens.

Currently the magazine/website GOOD has partnered with Occupy Design to encourage designers to create a design, icon, or infographic that shares the unifying spirit of the Occupy movement.   Individuals and organizations can participate.

All submitted designs will be voted on by the online community. $750 from the GOOD Fund will be used to support Occupy Design to print and distribute the winning design, and the winner will receive their design printed on a vinyl weatherproof sign, several 11×17 prints, and get an Occupy Design t-shirt.

In addition, you can download the Occupy Design Design Toolkit which includes digital templates, logos, and fonts.

Are you a designer and part of the 99%?  Take some time today and get working on a graphic for Occupy Design today.

Image Source:
Occupy Design

Links:

Occupy Guide for Designers

Occupy Design

Call to Design: The GOOD + Occupy Design Challenge

Occupy Together

 

 

A Subversive Plot?… Plant a Garden

A Subversive Plot?… Plant a Garden

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Roger Doiron is founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI), a Maine-based nonprofit network of over 20,000 individuals from 100 countries who are taking a (dirty) hands-on approach to relocalizing the food supply.  The group is a network of gardeners and good food advocates who work to make local foods even more “local” and broader.

In 2008, Doiron and KGI worked to campaign to have “high impact gardens” put in high profile places in order to promote growing food.  What is a better place for this than the U.S. White House – a location that ohad been a edible landscape both for animals and people years ago.  The idea of a food garden at the white house had been proposed by Michael Polland And Alice Waters – but the efforts had never resulted in a garden being planted.

Doiron and KGI led a  successful proposal and petition campaign to replant a kitchen garden at the White House which gathered over 100,000 signatures and international media coverage.  Together, gardeners and good food advocates pitched in on March 20, 2009 – to  help White House and the Obamas plant a healthy kitchen garden on the White House lawn.

KGI is working to get gardeners around the world to work together on feeding a growing population which has a degrading natural resource base and changing global climate.

There are currently over 1 billion hungry people in the world and that number is set to rise as the global population rises from 6.7 billion to over 9 billion in 2050.  Doiron and the KGI promote the idea that  planting more kitchen gardens – behind homes, schools, and in vacant urban lots – will be part of the solution

In his TED talk given in Spring of 2011, Doiron gave a humorous talk called,  “A Subversive Plot – How to Grow a Revolution in Your Own Backyard.”    Doiron starts out talking about how food is a food of energy and power, and how when we encourage people to grow their own food – we are encouraging them to get power over their food, health, and money.

If you have not seen this talk yet- I recommend checking it out – and starting now to plan your plot in your yard for Spring of 2012.

Links:

TED Talk – Roger Doiron – “A Subversive Plot – How to Grow a Revolution in Your Own Backyard.”

Kitchen Gardeners

Video about the Petition of the Garden on the Whitehouse Petition

 

Ice Drawings: Jim Denevan and the Largest Piece of Art

Ice Drawings: Jim Denevan and the Largest Piece of Art

Posted on by Kbaumlier

The Anthropologist is a project and platform created by the clothing store Anthropologie to show the process of creation and to create relationships with artists.   The main platform for this is the Anthropologiest website and various publications that share selected projects and art as a way to promote creativity.

Last year  The Anthropologist commissioned land artist Jim Denevan to draw on the frozen surface of Lake Baikal in Siberia.   Lake Baikal is the oldest and deepest lakes in the worldand is over 30 million years old. Denevan proposed to make the largest piece of art on the surface of the ice of the lake.

Denevan (who is from Santa Cruz), and his team made marks on nine square miles of ice by making large circles baced on the Fibonacci sequence.  To do the project, the artist and his team had to work in sub-zero temperatures and in strong winds to make the work.

You can see sketches, in-progress images, and film of the project on the site.  There is also a book and DVD about the piece that you can buy at Anthropologie.com.

Is it the largest piece of art?  That’s depends on what you call art – but it sure looks big to me.

Image Source:

The Anthropologist

Links:

The Anthropologist – Jim Denevan Project

Jim Denevan- Artist Site

Every felt stuck? The Book 344 Questions Might Help

Every felt stuck? The Book 344 Questions Might Help

Posted on by Kbaumlier

Ever felt stuck?  Really stuck?  As in.. what am I doing and does this really matter?  If you are having doubts – or maybe just need inspiration Stefan G. Bucher’s book 344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment (Voices That Matter) might be helpful – or at least amusing to read.  The book has hand-written illustrated flowcharts, lists, and more than 344 questions to provide a glimpse of where you are going (or should go.)  Stefan Bucher is a designer, author, and monster maker (on his website the Daily Monster he animates monster doodles, and monster apps.)

The book begins with the Stefan G. Bucher stating “Let’s be clear: I want this book to be useful to you. There are many great how-to books and biographies out there, and even more gorgeous collections of current and classic work to awe and inspire. But looking at catalogs of artistic success won’t make you a better artist any more than looking at photos of healthy people will cure your cold. You’ve got to take action!”

The questions in the book are designed to help you examine your life and career, where you want to be, and how to get there all done in Stefan Bucher’s unique, quirky, hand-lettered style. Can you name 10 things that reliably stress you out? What are the five things that are most important to you in the work you produce?  Do you need inspiration? Are you a virtuoso?  Would you like to be a virtuoso  What would be fun about it for you  What would you have to give up in exchange  How can you walk down two streets at once?

The book which is meant for you to write in and use as a workbook has flowchart boxes that you can write and draw in.  The book is about the size of your hand – and Bucher did most of the writing in the book – but he also has over 38 creative people contributing pages of questions and flowcharts.  These contributors include Arem Duplessis: Design director of the New York times Magazine, Patton Oswalt: comedian, writer, and actor and Stefan Sagmeister: designer.

Are you a creative person?  Are you searching? In life? In the bookstore? In the web?  As the cover says- this book might be for you – and as Stefan G. Bucher says at the beginning of the book – make sure you get a pen or pencil  and write in the book as you go.

Image Source:
Stefan G. Bucher

Links:

344 Questions: The Creative Person’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Insight, Survival, and Artistic Fulfillment

344 Design

Stefan G. Bucher

 

 

 

The Posterity Project: Famine Aid Posters

The Posterity Project: Famine Aid Posters

Posted on by Kbaumlier

In the last 60 years, East Africa has been hit by the most severe drought and experts report that over 12 million people are at risk. Fundraising efforts are struggling to keep up the relief effort.  One in three children is suffering from severe malnutrition.  Most children are in need of high-nutrional food, sanitized water, and inoculation from disease. UNICEF is working to give support but there is more to be done.

50/50 is an international initiative with nearly 50 projects spread across 8 different countries that is a  collaborative fundraising experiment of digital projects to help support raising money for East Africa.  The project calls on artists and media makers to submit one fundraising project a day for 50 days, with the end goal of raising  $1.57 million toward UNICEF relief efforts.

One project, Prosperity is a limited edition of Giclée archival poster prints that are designed to support the 50/50 initative.  All posters were designed The Mill’s creative staff and its network of artist friend in order to support the famine aid in East Africa.

The posters range from abstract images of the sun, to cartoon like images of Africa.  The images are related to East Africa and famine – but are not obvious our heavy-handed.

Hyesung Park’s poster Together has figures interacting, spelling out the world AFRICA.   Colin Hess’ poster What the People Say is a pen and ink cartoon-like image of Africa surrounded by thought bubbles with celebrity quotes such as, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels  – Kate Moss.”  Michelle Higa’s Sun is a textured image of a abstract radiating round “sun.”

So far, Posterity has released about half of the posters and the rest will debut after Thanksgiving.

Image Source:

The Posterity Project

Links:

50/50 Project

The Posterity Project

The Mill