Redesign high school? Here’s an award that welcomes innovation

[Tom Biederbeck] What high school student doesn’t have ideas about how to make school better? Putting those ideas into a positive context is School: By Design, a new award from Design Ignites Change and Designers Accord that asks high school students — with their college and professional design mentors — to “redesign your school.” In support, the Mohawk Feedback Loop Notebook project launches today on Felt & Wire Shop with a spectacular array of unique letterpress notebooks.

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09.08.10

ThirdBay’s “Print Is Alive” poster is a tour de force in letterpress

[Tom Biederbeck] An exceptional creative achievement, a particularly adroit maneuver, a difficult feat: The definition of tour de force — perfectly describing the masterful poster produced by Martin Venezky and ThirdBay Letterpress. Here, I talk with ThirdBay’s proprietor Jeff Towner about the printing dimension of the project … and unexpectedly get an education in letterpress.

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09.07.10

Destination GAIN: Where Stanley Hainsworth’s heading for (re)invention

[Stanley Hainsworth] When Kenna Kay and I were asked to co-chair the 2010 AIGA GAIN conference, we looked at ourselves and said, “As fellow designers let’s ensure this conference will be something people will anticipate with excitement, experience irresistibly, and walk away from inspired, motivated and determined to make some changes.”

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09.03.10

So Noted: Design for social change takes to the road

[Tom Biederbeck] Ingredients for a revolution: 25 schools, 75 days, 6300 miles, 1 vintage Airstream trailer, 40 humanitarian products and projects. Emily Pilloton is mixing them into the launch of the Design Revolution Roadshow, setting out Feb. 1, with an official launch party Feb. 4 at Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

In the Design Revolution Roadshow, Pilloton is aiming at nothing less than spreading the gospel on how design for social change can address humanity’s problems and needs. Architect, designer and author of the book Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People, Pilloton and her business partner Matt Miller will cross the nation educating the next generation of creative problem-solvers to apply their skills to the world’s most pressing problems.

Forty of the products featured in Pilloton’s book will be included in the exhibition that accompanies the Roadshow — part of the product display is shown at left — and the tour’s lectures and presentations are based on the toolkit and call to action she sets forth in the book. From its biodiesel-powered truck to the exhibition’s startlingly innovative products (protective footgear for clearing land mines, eyeglasses that don’t require a doctor or prescription), the Design Revolution Roadshow aims to both communicate and embody how design can enable and improve human lives … instead of just churning out stuff that takes up space.

Felt & Wire will be covering the Roadshow in the coming months. For now, check out Pilloton’s appearance on The Colbert Report, here.

01.21.10
  1. Posted by paperlover on 01.22.10 at 4:42 pm

    Saw Emily on the Colbert Report. Can’t wait to see the road show!