Designing For Social Change

Designing for social change, Andrew Shea, 2012, Princeton Architecture Press

Rather than just reading and taking in the information that this book provided, I have tried to relate the quotes to the essay by writing them in a triangulation form. By writing these paragraphs with embedded quotes, they will be able to be transferred to the body of the essay as well as relating to the imagery presented with the text. 

An example of a project where in depth research to inform the design was conducted is the Green Patriot Posters. The project began with Edward Morris and Susannah Slayer (The Canary Project) who wanted to address the problem of global warming in Cleveland. To address this issue they set out to produce 'visual media, events and artwork' to address global warming.  The aim of this work was to 'build an understanding of human-induced climate change and energize commitment to solutions'. This demonstrates an active project whose designs are produced to aid and encourage social change. 

The original funding proposal for the project involved an 'extensive research period that involved recruiting and educating teenagers to conduct surveys'. Not only is this project aiming to educate the wider society but it also focused on educating a smaller audience so that they were active and involved in the project. This is a demonstration of the multiple highlighted strategies of community based graphic design - build trust, design with the communities voice and give communities ownership. The research conducted by the teenagers in the community was then followed up to asses the impact that the project had on the community. From this they learned that 'those people who paid attention to the bus ads had trouble figuring out what they were about and did not really care about climate change.' This indicates that the project was not successful at designing for their target audience, even though extensive research was undertaken.