One of the two electronic billboards used in the project. Image: Duarte Carrilho da Graça

Context:
Type ‘London’ ‘Social’ ‘Policy’ into a news search these days and you are likely to find articles on the rising cost of living, increasing multimillion-pound apartments continuing to sell to the mega-rich, and the bedroom tax which has increased taxation of some of the poorest of London’s residents. It is not uncommon to read headlines such as “ The reconfiguration of London is akin to social cleansing”. At the same time people continue to relocate to the city, more infact than those leaving. London is Changing is one project which explores the role design can play in understanding this context.

The project brought together two aspects of Rebecca Ross’ practice; firstly an opportunity she was afforded to access 2 digital billboards in central London, compensation for work Rebecca completed for the billboard company. And secondly her separate involvement in public consultation on urban planning in London, a process she reflected was frustratingly “un-public facing”. She explains, “…I was pursuing the possibilities of this medium at the same time that I was exploring existing forms of public conversation about the future London and then two and two came together.”

One of the two electronic billboards used in the project. Image: Duarte Carrilho da Graça

The intention of the project was to use design to engage with the public on changes that were taking place in London, and in the rhetoric that surrounds these changes. Rebecca explains:

Recent changes to the welfare state here are (deliberately) pouring fuel on the fire of a class war. Unjust policies are being authored and implemented by a wealthy elite conservative government. These policies have a more severe impact on the poorest members of society… but they also impact the middle class… It gets especially divisive when bones are tossed to those of us who are more middle class, such as through policies such as help to buy… to keep the chattering class as allies and from being too outspoken. It is difficult for most people to see the aggregate picture of what is going on. Our fates are all connected though and this is all too often under-emphasised or even hidden. I am not an expert on economics or policy but what I pay close attention to is how easy it is in the contemporary climate for policies that benefit the few at the expense of the many to be either packaged as something else or buried in over-complicated rhetoric. I think design has a large part to play in engaging with this condition.

Main page londonischanging.org

Process:
The project consisted of a web platform through which contributors who were either relocating from, or to London, wrote why they moved and how they felt about it. Messages were then selected by the team whose aim was to gather a range of opinions. In late February and March of 2015 two electronic billboards in Central London began featuring the selected quotes.

Web form: londonischanging.org

The billboards and the web platform were paired down and functional to the point where there was little else but the voice of the writer. This aesthetic meant that each voice was presented equally, as opposed to the ‘loudest’ being heard. The billboards we electronic, meaning they scrolled through multiple messages in space of a minute and could be changed from one day to the next. As different opinions went up they appeared to answer on another — a public dialogue of sorts.

The medium:
The billboard medium is not neutral. It is at the same time ‘public’ — its success depending largely on its visibility in the public domain — and yet monopolised by, and largely synonymous with, commercial interests. Their monumental presence on public space is unmatched by posters or traditional print media communication and these new electronic billboards are more dynamic than ever before, scrolling through multiple messages over time. In the case of London is Changing this meant the texts were seen for about 15 seconds of every minute, placed between conventional advertising campaigns from corporations like Cadbury’s and Facebook. The minimalism of the LIC billboards cut through the slick noise of the conventional corporate advertising, meaning that as well as the being part of the project dialogue they might also viewed in the context of public advertising itself. Imagine, for example, a text like, “What creativity can there be when only money can buy your next opportunity?” followed by a Britain is Good for Business campaign.

One of the two electronic billboards used in the project. Image: Duarte Carrilho da Graça

Participation:
5000 people contributed towards LIC, the greatest number of which were people leaving the city, feeling ‘priced out’ and unable to live with increasing living costs. However, as Rebecca has pointed out, London’s population is actually increasing, not decreasing. One aspect of this is the way in which the project relied on local networks to gather contributors. People leaving a city are more likely to be accessing these networks than new movers or lower paid economic migrants. Reflecting on the context of the projects and the role design plays in engaging with this complexity, Rebecca suggested that another time she would reconsider the medium, for example by ‘situating something in bus shelters next as this could be more heterogeneously accessible in a city such as London.’

++++++

Neither complexity nor over simplification alone moves people towards informed understanding multifaceted issues. What design can do is to engage us and show us a way in, helping us to navigate through an issue, presented from different angles, in order to form become more informed. London is Changing stands as an example of how design can engage with and begin to communicate the conflicts and contradictions that form a fuller picture of what is going on.

Fretto explains in his introduction the motivation for the Toolkit and his participatory methods came from his previous work:

“Helping people in need was always my intention, but in the end, I questioned whether my interventions were truly helping or just making a complicated situation more complicated. Participation in design appealed to me because it included something that was missing before—the voices of those whom my design intentions would ultimately impact.
…The general idea was to introduce participants to the fundamentals of graphic design and assist them in developing real-world design campaigns that addressed an issue they each cared about.”

But he also openly acknowledges the workshop ‘… wasn’t squeaky clean’, stating ‘… This Toolkit is far from perfect; it certainly doesn’t provide all of the answers…’ But the Toolkit is really quite thought provoking, in part because the honest tone throughout the text invites you to ask questions about this project and participatory design work in general. As a student project we can look at this in context of an exploration of ideas.

Structure and Content
The Toolkit is structured in two major sections. Getting Ready takes the reader through planning the project, which covers topics like setting expectations and logistical concerns such as resources and
recruitment. Putting it into Action takes the reader through the execution of a project, with topics like launching the project, building skills and dealing with setbacks. Fretto delivers this with straightforward practical advice, interspersed with anecdotes from his experiences during the workshop.

One of the strengths of the Toolkit is its frank honesty. For example, one pull out reads:

Don’t Ask “Leading Questions”
On the first day of my workshop I had a great discussion with high school-aged participants around the question, “what makes design good or poor?” There were colorful responses and many different perspectives discussed but one student in particular made a great point. He implied that design is poor when it doesn’t deliver what is promised, as in a vacuum cleaner that boasts of durability but then breaks days after you buy it… I wanted to prod deeper, bringing the issue to the surface. But in doing so, I was asking leading questions. I forced the discussion in one direction in efforts to illuminate the point that was almost made earlier. One of the oldest participants was on to me. He asked, out of frustration, “Do you just want us to say that design can be dishonest? Because it just feels like all you’re trying to do is get us to say that!” Bold! I moved on confident, but was embarrassed. I realized that while trying to remain neutral, I simply pushed too hard for the point. Looking back on it now, I probably should have spoken up and made the point myself.

The general tone of the guide is friendly, open and casual, inviting you into Fretto’s process:

Something won’t go as planned; accept this fact! The workshop will likely encounter some bumps in the road no matter what—and working with human beings sometimes gets messy. Some of these bumps are unavoidable, but others can sidestepped— especially this early in the planning stage.

There is plenty of practical advice too, based on Fretto’s project experience:

TIPS: HELP! My Participants Are Not Talking!
Consider trying “Think/Pair/Share,” a technique that makes it easier for participants to speak up in a group setting. First, bring up an idea that you’d like the group to think about individually. Then ask them to pair up with a partner and share their responses with each other. Finally, one of them will present their collective responses to the group. This method yields productive discussions, especially if you have shy participants.

Participatory Design and Visual Design:

I have worked for organisations in the past which use participatory methods, specifically within photography. Reading through Design for Us got me thinking back to this work and some of the issues that came up then which are as relevant to graphic design as they are for photography.

Beyond many of the interesting points Fretto brings up directly, there were a number of questions the Toolkit raises for me. Questions, I feel, we perhaps need to ask more explicitly and answer honestly before delivering participatory projects for social impact:

1. Why these people? Why these issues? Why us?
What is our own motivation for working with a group of people or for a certain cause? Am I really the right person for the job?
Asking this question can help us understand what we can actually do, the impact we can realistically have and where our unique skills are best placed and matched. It can also lead us to understand who we need to work with in order to really have the impact we want.
Put simply, being honest about our own motivations can help us understand our potential to effect change.
For the participants Fretto advocates a Circle of Influence exercise, whereby the participants plot issues they’re interested in based on a scale of being close to them or affecting them personally, to issues affecting the whole world. This helps them find an issue that is meaningful to them and which they can affect. The same process can be applied by the designer/facilitator themselves.

2. How sustainable is the project in the long term?
If it’s difficult to fund a project, what does that tell you about the possibility for the project to be taken forward after your involvement? If it’s a project for the community, how feasible is it to be self sustaining, without your involvement after a certain stage? If it’s a single project that happens just this once, what is the desired impact in the short term and will people be left with faith in the next practitioner who comes along to effect change in their community?

3. Whose goals matter?
If you discover your goals differ from your partners it’s time to re-evaluate why you are doing the project and who you’re hoping to serve. When you get partners involved in a project they have to be real partners—equal and respected. They might not work with design but in designing for social impact, ‘design’ is but one part of the process.

4. What are your expectations of the project and what are the participants expectations? Who created those expectations?
This is about looking inwards. Understanding what the potential really is, and what the limitations are. We need to be realistic about what a design project can achieve. It could be a lot, it could be very subtle. Claiming too much of the potential of a project at the start raises expectations and makes achieving anything meaningful very difficult.
This is also where, as designers, we can honestly contribute by articulating just how much impact design can have—and the conditions that need to be there make that change. Visual communication for change doesn’t happen in a silo and the mechanisms needed to support it should also be communicated.

5. Along with the means to express themselves have we helped participants understand how their work might be interpreted by their audience?
Understanding our audiences and how people ‘read’ images and text, is as much part of our skills as designers as having the technical ability to make something aesthetically or conceptually powerful. This understanding also needs to be passed on so that participants are aware how their work could be perceived.

Sometimes it is hard to ask these questions during a project because ultimately the answers might reveal uncomfortable truths, or highlight flaws in our work. Perhaps it might reveal that the project is too short or promises more than it can deliver. It’s for exactly these reasons we have to ask the questions.

Fretto’s efforts offer a great starting point. Such documentation and reflection push us all to think more deeply about our own work and methods and, going forward, help us develop more meaningful and considered projects.

Images courtesy Mike Fretto

Screenshots from The Okay News

A simple, yet delightfully compelling idea, Rebecca Ross’ Okay News project is an attempt to shake us out of this stupor with which we read the news. The app (though it was created long before that word was in common use) sits in the background of everyday computer use, with only one form of interface or interaction: An OS dialog box that pops up every few minutes with a headline from the New York Times. To continue using the computer, the user must click “OK”, a way of calling attention to the approval inherent in not getting involved with the things he or she is reading about.

Apart from changing the way a user interacts with their daily news, the project, completed in 2003, was also a response to the (at the time) growing consciousness of the computer as a portal that connects you to people and events across the world.

Asked how she first though of the idea for the project, Rebecca writes:

I am originally from New York. Typical New Yorkers like to relax in the morning with the New York Times and a bagel (preferably an everything bagel with lox and cream cheese) and coffee. In many ways, the design of the New York Times is irrecoverably fused with this aspect of New York Culture. You see the paper and even though it is detailing really intense things happening around the world, somehow you unwind with it and possibly even pat yourself on the back for being engaged with the events of the world because you’re reading the paper even though all you did was eat a bagel in response.

With the Okay News, I wanted to try and shake people out of this condition by presenting them with headlines in another form. I had originally wanted to distribute it as a virus but did not know how to do this technically. So this whole experience relied on individual masochism because if you installed the software and then didn’t okay the headline that came up on the screen, you could not go back to whatever you were doing before it popped up.

All images courtesy Rebecca Ross. http://rebeccaross.net

The World Comics Network (India), started by political cartoonist Sharad Sharma in mid nineties, looks at introducing Grassroots Comics as a tool for communication and social design. Working with different communities, they emphasise on the value of visual art, self-expression and awareness in creating social change. Through their practice they have truly embraced the idea of design for the people and by the people, acting as a catalyst for change in the social sector.

Grassroots Comics as a medium stands out distinctly from mainstream comics since it is not created by professional artists. As the World Comics Network(WCN) puts it,
‘these comics are created by ‘You and Me’, common masses themselves. Comics have given a new direction to representation of silences thereby creating a revolution in itself. These comics are easy to-make, reproduced by simple photocopier and distributed in a limited demarcated area, which invites local debates among people from different socio-economic stratum of the society.’

WCN answers some of the most frequently asked questions in a comic format.

How Grassroots Comics operate
Primarily through the medium of a workshop which travels to several rural and remote areas in India and other countries, the workshop leaders gather community members to visualise topics of importance to them. With the help of a manual, which teaches them basics of expressions and postures, the participants then start storyboarding and visually representing their stories, in a simple four panelled A4 comic poster format. It is then inked in black, and photocopied to make several wall posters which are pasted at prime locations within the community like the village panchayats, shops, electric poles etc.

WCN has discovered the potential in the visual storytelling form of comics to connect with people of varying levels of literacy and in the process targeting a much larger audience. It is also this visual and easy to comprehend nature of comics which they have tapped into to build it as a medium to address issues that otherwise become sensitive topics and are not discussed out in the open.
Like in the case of the comic below which questions the veiling tradition in Rajasthan but in a simple, light hearted way, by basing the comic on a humorous yet practical problem.

“Veil System”, a lady is unable to inform her father-in-law about the theft of their luggage because of the veil system. Both regret the incident and the old tradition of veil system.

In case of these grassroots comics, the content is based on memories and stories of the community, represented in regional languages and aided by a strong sense of the visual culture and local perception of that space. Shifting focus from aesthetics, the idea behind the comics is to create something which is more contextual. Through the past fifteen years, these regional comics have covered a plethora of social issues as well as instances of development and accomplishments in these conflict ridden areas. With the use of minimum resources they capture underlying issues and people of a community and portray them in a thought provoking manner.

Designer as facilitator
While going through the project, what struck me the most was the change in the role of a designer in the field. From being the outsider who orchestrates such conversations, there is a now a need for the designer to assume the role of a facilitator to build a participatory and more inclusive process, which looks not just at locating challenges but also collectively – designer along with community – finding solutions for them. Besides bringing in our skills,the role we play in mobilising the thoughts and voices of the community becomes pivotal to the project. As Andrew Shea, in his book Designing for Social Change says, “sometimes you may need to fade into the background and observe, while at other times you might need to work side by side with the members of the community.”

Design for the community, with the community.
The challenge for an urban designer working in the rural context can be understanding who the target audience should be. The World Comics Network base their primary audience and context in the same space that they work in, thus pushing forward boundaries of designing with the community in order to design for the community.

It is only when these stories are distributed that they call for action. Exhibiting the photocopied comics of the participants in easily accessible areas of the community, builds a platform to not just showcase stories and talent, but also open up local debates and discussions within the community on topics which are otherwise neglected. The close proximity and the direct communication between the makers and the readers in the space provide a setup which initiates conversations and drives change.

In a Grassroots Comics Campaign, Apni Dikri Ro Haq ( Girl child right) initiated in Barmer District of Western Rajasthan,India in 2005, more than 300 wall poster comics were created by children and youth on topics of girl child rights, female foeticide, child marriage etc. A selection of which were circulated in several villages by the help of a motorbike rally, which paved way to serious debates and several local people committing themselves in bringing about change in the situation.

Left: Apni Dikri Ro Haq campaign, Barmer, Rajasthan.
Right: World Comics network in another village in Rajasthan, India.
Image Courtsey: World Comics Finland.

“During various discussions and brainstorming sessions, one thing emerged very clear – if we want this campaign to succeed, it has to first start ticking like a clock in peoples’ mind. We remembered what Mahatma Gandhi had said years ago; something which we thought was very much relevant to what we were planning. He had talked about a movement being launched by not working along the periphery of the society, but after penetrating deep into it. He had also reflected upon the fact that villages were the true image of real India.We decided to make these two observations of the Mahatma the pivot of our campaign” – Sharad Sharma

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime
WCN has successfully created a system of sustained engagement, which doesn’t stop at one project, but gives its participants the required skill sets to continue such efforts within the community, without any outside help. The merit of the network also lies in the simple structure of the workshop, which not just makes well informed participants, but also empowers them to make change. While the focus is not on skills, the WCN has created many participants, who find their calling in the medium, and with time and under guidance of the WCN master the art, to build similar workshops within their own community. Like in the case of the Apni Dikri Ro Haq campaign in Barmer,the Barmer Comics Manch, a local initiative, now continues the campaign.

A basic manual , introducing grassroots comics, is also available on free to download basis on the website in English and Hindi. Other languages for the manual can also be requested.

The easy to understand and cost effective nature of the workshop has found popularity in the development sector, which has led to the same method now being followed by several NGO’s and other individuals in countries like Pakistan,Nepal, Sri Lanka, Brazil, UK and Tanzania to name a few. The Indian network has also collaborated with World Comics Finland to introduce grassroots comics in many areas, along with setting up a separate network for Pakistan as well as Nepal.

Left: Comic from Nepal – On girl child and the importance of a daughter.
Right: Comic from Africa - On Female Genital Mutilation.

You can also look at these comics on their website, as well as purchase some compiled publications.

The phrase ‘Design for democracy’ is now thoroughly part of the design rhetoric, with eponymous courses at design schools and AIGA programmes. What does this mean? In the context of the Field Guides, design for democracy is design which supports the democratic process. Design which tries to ensure that people vote the way they want to. This also translates as design which understands the audience, understands the problem and designs for both. The unique thing about Field Guides is that they use design to facilitate better design. Here’s why:

In the 2000 presidential election in the USA the design of one ballot paper in Florida was so problematic that it resulted in not only hundreds of unintended votes, but ultimately lawsuits and harsh critique aimed at the election official that designed the ballot paper. In the context of design part of what’s troubling about this incident is that the official has gone on record to say that the confusing design was actually the result of her attempt to make ballots easier to read. Her good intentions however resulted in the punch hole for Al Gore becoming confused with that of the Reform party candidate on the opposite page.

Image from American History..

This incident, it’s been said, stimulated ernest discourse around improving ballot design but after two more elections a dramatic shift had not taken place. In mid-2007 design guidelines were put in place, with contributions from AIGA’s Design for Democracy project and published in a thorough U.S. Election Assistance Commission report.

It is from this context that the Field Guides emerged as a considered effort to further improve the situation.

The guides acknowledge the reality of who is often designing communication materials around election — non designers, not necessarily well versed in design theory. It also recognised that communication with voters is one part of a much larger, busier and complex schedule around election time and that anything which would move election officials to act would have to compete with a number of other concerns for their attention.

With this in mind the guides are based on in depth and informed research but have distilled this into a manageable format that would feel relevant and feasible to the people who would ultimately put the guidelines into practice.

The guides practice what they preach, with a functional, not overly designed aesthetic. The structure is clear — examples on the left, guideline on the right, things to avoid in grey, things to do in black and illustrations where needed used to illustrate a point.

The small, compact format with detailing like the round corners helps the guides feel unintimidating and manageable. While the confident, authoritative voice and straightforward language belies the research that is the foundation of these humble looking booklets.

Ultimately the greatest value of these guides is the advice they give and the better design they inspire. The best way to get a sense of this is to read them. All eight guides can be found on their website and through the links below:

Vol. 01. Designing usable ballots (PDF) (original research)
Vol. 02. Writing instructions voters understand (PDF) (original NIST report)
Vol. 03. Testing ballots for usability (PDF) (link to LEO kit at UPA)
Vol. 04. Effective poll worker materials (PDF) (original NIST report)
Vol. 05. Choosing how to communicate with voters (PDF)
Vol. 06. Designing voter education booklets and flyers (PDF)
Vol. 07. Designing election department websites (PDF)
Vol. 08. Guiding voters through the polling place (PDF)

All images, except original ballot card, courtesy Oxide Design Co..

The Refugee Project is a self-initiated effort by New York based Social Impact Design agency Hyperakt and Artist and Designer Ekene Ijeoma to make this valuable information easy to understand and simple to navigate. The interactive map tracks almost all significant migrations of displaced people in the last forty years, enabling a narrative, geographical, and temporal understanding of the crises.

The primary interface is constructed of three key elements: A timeline grouping crises by year, a heat map of refugee numbers overlaid onto a world map, and a headline highlighting key world events that year that contributed to or impacted a refugee crisis. These three components come together to create a sort of ‘dashboard’ overview of refugee crises, allowing you to grasp the scale and context of a crisis (in brief) quickly, while making it easy to drill deeper to find specific information.

Selecting a year populates the world map with a heat map overlay of circles of varying radii depicting the number of refugees originating from that country, while an information console on the side-bar lists figures and additional contextual information. The accompanying headlines and crises summaries, original content created for the site, echo the simple yet deep ethos of the rest of the tool.

Clicking anywhere on the map brings up information specific to that region, with lines radiating outward connecting it with the nations providing asylum to the affected people.

The interface on mobile devices is pared down even further, displaying the three countries with the highest number of refugees for any year, as well as the top three countries providing asylum, accompanied by links to more information.

The project has been received with near unanimous praise, with recognition from the New York MOMA, Design Museum London, and more, as well as worldwide press coverage and approval from organisations such as Amnesty International, the UNHCR, Oxfam International, and Human Rights Watch.

Making things visible is making things actionable.
The Refugee Project’s simplicity is its greatest victory. By giving visual form to such a large dataset, the tool enables even laypeople to make meaning of complex information, and enables insights that would otherwise have been apparent only to statisticians and academics. For instance, in light of the ongoing rhetoric surrounding the refugee crisis in Syria, I was surprised to see that the trend of refugees moving from developing to developed nations is, in fact, going the other way: some 85%+ of refugees from the developing world today find refuge in neighbouring countries, as opposed to a decade year ago, when the number was nearer 70%.

The project has even inspired others to create inspirational and interpretive works of their own, one great example being programmer and artist Brian Foo’s “Distance from Home” project, that uses algorithms to generate musical notes from the UNHCR data.

For more reading on the project, as well as works inspired by it, see:
Hyperakt case study
Design & Violence: MOMA
Design for Conflict Heritage

Back in March 2014, a Indian-American teen claimed, to great media fanfare, that the US government could save ink and therefore resources and money by switching typefaces. What seemed a rather clever suggestion on the surface was quickly shot down by the type design community, and though we can commend a 14 year old boy for having his ideas and heart in the right place, the professionals, it turns out, had a point. It also turned out that this was neither the first time anyone had thought about typefaces and ink consumption, nor was this the first time someone had meticulously studied the differences between typefaces with respect to this issue.

The responses and critique however were largely aimed at shooting down the idea and touched less on what we as designers are doing about the huge amount of resources that go into the industry we are all part of. Was this a missed opportunity for a wider conversation about our role in this?

Image: Studio Roosegaarde

We were fortunate recently to be at Kyoorius Design Yatra where Daan Roosegaarde, of Studio Roosegaarde, gave a stirring presentation of his work. Of all the work he showed, it was the Smog Free Project that has really lingered in my thoughts, and moved me beyond awe to think about its relation to my own field. What, I wondered, would be our equivalent in visual communication terms? This giant air purifier, installable in parks and other public spaces, cleans 30,000 m³ of air per hour. It uses ‘no more electricity than a waterboiler’ and is powered by green wind energy. The intention, he explained, was not to provide a solution to our dirty air, but to stir the conversation. Change by example. Not waiting for governments to move on this, but rather acting with the intention of becoming a small part, even a trigger perhaps, for the wider change that needs to happen. As a recent article in The Guardian put it:

Roosegaarde has far-reaching ambitions for the tower, which is part of his Smog-Free Project. ‘It’s not only intended to be a local solution that creates clean parks or playgrounds,’ he explains. ‘It’s also a sensory experience of a clean future, a place where people can experience clean air.’ He hopes to bring together governments, NGOs, the clean tech industry and ordinary citizens.
‘We can work together to make whole cities smog-free,’ he says. ‘We can wait — or we can participate.’

This made me think of another project, somewhat more familiar in medium, which I think is ‘participating’ and pushing this conversation further.

Ryman Eco is an ‘unfinished font’, or as I like to think, a font which finishes itself. It is a font which uses ink-spread — the bleeding of ink on the page which occurs with common ink jet printing — to create a full form. Meaning the characters don’t need to be a solid, filled forms, and therefore use 33% less ink.

Image: Dan Rhatigan, Ryman Eco

Dan Rhatigan, Type Director at Monotype and the designer behind Ryman Eco, explains his expectations of the project:

…Ryman Eco is an experiment, and like all good experiments you collect data, revisit the hypothesis. My idea for Ryman Eco is that we will be able to revisit it periodically over time and improve it and refine it and really get it better and better and better…

I don’t expect using 33% less ink to save the world directly, but I expect it to be one step in a bigger conversation about how we can save things, I expect it to be one gesture that triggers you to think about what else you can do to make an impact.

The examples of Roosegaarde and Rhatigan suggest that the the answers we’re looking for might not come from easy fixes that make for good media stories. The people that will be at the forefront of this conversation and this change, will be people with the dedication and perseverance to understand complex scenarios and attempt informed interventions, at their level. Some, like Roosegaarde and Rhatigan, will stir this conversation with provocations which are extraordinary examples of what design can do, whether it is fine engineering or craft or thinking with hope and ingenuity around today’s problems. Solutions that make people sit up and ask, like the audience member at the end of Roosegaarde’s talk, ‘but shouldn’t we be getting to the root of the air problem.’ Yes, exactly!

This is not to suggest that we can’t or shouldn’t play our part—quite the opposite—more voices are needed. Many of the answers, as we already know, are actually simple. The point now is, who is participating in the conversation?

One Less Cartridge, by Andy Lockley

The capitol X has one of the most complicated structures, just in figuring out how you get all these lines to interact in the middle, this net of parts that leave all these spaces in the middle free for the ink to go.—Dan Rhatigan

This post was first published on Codesign blog.

FS Me is a typeface family designed by Jason Smith of Fontsmith. Developed with Mencap, a leading UK charity for people with learning disabilities, it was designed to meet, and then exceed, the recommendations of government accessibility guidelines. FS Me aimed to become a typeface which could be used across the scope of communication design — not an accessible typeface for a specific audience but an inclusive typeface for everyone.

“FS Me helps me understand things that I read. If I understand more I feel more independent.” — Lorainne Bellamy, Mencap Research Panel

Accessibility, when it comes to communication design, is about providing access to content, making design choices which actively aid understanding through legibility and readability. This is particularly important for people with learning difficulties, who may find some typefaces hinder their reading experience.

Image credit: Fontsmith

Accessibility guidelines typically recommend using a sans serif typeface like Arial at a minimum of 12 points. This can be challenging on a practical level because of space constraints, and in terms of context because sometimes Arial, in fact usually Arial, is not the most appropriate choice for every project. To fall back on such homogeny when it comes to selecting a typeface for its accessible qualities does not do justice to the reader, whoever they may be.

The FS Me project set out to meet the needs of both the designer and the reader.

Image credit: Fontsmith

Keeping in mind that there are many different types of learning disabilities which can affect reading in different ways, there are some challenges that are common, and were highlighted by the research that FS Me is built on. For example:

Distinguishing between certain characters, particularly bs from ds and ps from qs can be challenging for some readers. Many typefaces simply reflect these characters and give no other clues to distinguishing between them.

Reading letter combinations. The difference between ‘rn’ and ‘m’, for example, can be difficult to make out.

The perceived warmth or friendliness of certain fonts, like Comic Sans (above), often makes them popular choices when it comes to making accessible materials, rather than whether they are appropriate for the age and context of the reader. But being accessible does not mean being casual or childish.

Image credit: Fontsmith

In response to these issues FS Me was designed with:
More open counters and a focus on accentuating distinct character elements to help in quick and clear identification. This is most apparent in the extended ascenders and descenders, serifs on the capital I, and larger than average dots on the i and j.
A carefully determined stroke width in FS Me Regular weight to aid legibility based on project research.
Differentiation of forms, like the rounder curvature of the r which, when preceding an n, is less likely to be read as an m.
The choice of single story ‘handwriting-style’ a and g, as opposed to double story characters.
A warmth and friendliness which comes across in the slight rounding off of terminals, but isn’t exaggerated to the point of being childlike.

FS Me is about design that doesn’t patronise. People with learning disabilities are often treated as inferior by childlike design. FS Me is designed for adults, not children – a beautifully-designed font for everyone. — Fontsmith

The project didn’t lose sight of standards that make it a viable, commercial typeface — perhaps the key to its success as a widely used and desired typeface across sectors and contexts. The family has several weights and standard as well as pro versions, making it versatile for such wide usage.

Tested by the target readers, developed from the insights of sector specialists, and designed by type professionals, FS Me is good example of what it means to design with not for people. Collaboration, but not compromise, which didn’t lose sight of the design rigour that should be applied to all typeface design, for everyone.

Image credit: Fontsmith

Supporters’ Scarves is a recent project by Common Office. In their words, the project “appropriates the football scarf for supporters of six political causes; equality; affordable housing; the welfare state; the national health service; public transport; and new towns.”
This projects has stayed with me, I suspect, because of its powerful simplicity and considered execution. What makes it interesting to me, in the context of Rising, is the aspect of ‘appropriation’, not a difficult thing to do but difficult to do well.

Appropriation can be an effective device. The process of consciously lifting something out out of its typical context and using it in another, can create new meaning and ways of looking at something. However there’s also a fine line between appropriation, pastiche (imitation of style), or worse, plain stealing (claiming an idea as your own). Creating something which has longevity and deeper resonance requires an understanding of the thing being appropriated.

1.Image source: 1 & 2. Eric Kilby, Football at Fenway.

So what is a football scarf?

The football supporters’ scarf has been around for over a century in the UK — a mark of pride and a statement of where the wearer’s allegiance lies. You still see people wearing the original two colour striped scarves but increasingly the humble scarf has become an important commercial outlet for teams, sold as expensive official merchandise, with their crest and name knitted in.

Outside the stadium the scarves become a walking advertisement of a supporters’ team, whilst inside they are can be held up like a banner. They have to be seen and read at a distance and they have to make a strong visual statement when seen as a mass. As a result football scarves typically use only two prominent colours with bold typography.

But what has all this got to do with visual communication for social impact?

The football scarf is such a simple, but potent symbol of support for something, whether you’re a football supporter or not, that it lends itself to the act of getting behind any cause. The desire to be part of something collectively, and own it as part of our visual identity, is not unique to football supporters. We want to show we believe in something, perhaps encourage others to consider these causes too. We’ve seen this in the rubber wristbands of social causes like Livestrong and in Facebook profiles changed to equal signs in support of HRC equal marriage campaign. But rarely do we see such causes using a medium quite as loaded and constructed as the supporters’ scarf, lending the project a longevity and freshness which also transcends age and class strata.

An important part of the project is the typography of Supporters’ Scarves. With the key piece of information being text-based, a typeface was needed which was practical — something that could accommodate the varied lengths of texts, as well as appropriate to the context and meaning of the different messages. Common Office commissioned Åbäke to create a custom font for the project, British Rail Ultra-Condensed, an ultra-condensed sans which comfortably accommodates varied messages; much longer than the usual team names on football scarves. The font is based on Rail Alphabet, designed by Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir around 1965 for the National Rail Service signage (now privatised) and once used in the state healthcare service. In essence a typeface that once belonged to the public and public space, making it apt for the public issues on the scarves, whilst also addressing their practical requirements with the clarity and impact of a typeface designed for signage.

This project stands out for me because it is made to last, in design aesthetic and production, and uses a visual language that is understood and familiar, whilst still developing it in a way which makes it meaningful to the message and refreshing in its new context. A result of mindful consideration for the visual language and medium being used.

Except where mentioned all images by Erika Wall.

#missingtype was created for this year’s National Blood Week in the UK, in collaboration with Engine and Twenty Six Digital. The campaign was a response to the dramatic reduction the in the number of new blood donors coming forward in the UK. Jon Latham at NHS Blood and Transplant, speculates,

…people’s lives have got busier over the last decade. People are working longer hours, commuting further, spending more time online and have less time of their own, despite more options of how to use it. Good causes are also competing increasingly for people’s attention and time.

And yet the campaign saw everyone from big brands to small family businesses, individuals, as well as groups of employees, dropping the As, Os and Bs from their names to raise awareness of the need for new blood donors. They photoshopped their logos and physically altered their sign boards, changed twitter handles and facebook profiles, and took snaps of themselves holding up hangman-esque signs and altered name tags.

Source

My personal favourite came from Deborah Champion, an artist who did a limited-edition print-run of one of her existing prints, Help will Come, and gave it away free to people who shared her poignant post.

1.Image credit and work: Deborah Champion & 2. Image source

The campaign reached an overall social media audience of 147 million across the week, with 30,000 new donors registering during the week and a three-fold increase in registrations compared to last year, breaking previous Blood Week Records.

Source

Source

So how do you create a campaign that everyone from an individual artist to a large corporate — even the prime minister’s residence — can and wants to be a part of? A campaign that some of the world’s largest brands are willing to modify their own logos for? And a campaign that can have impact on its cause beyond the publicity surge?

Source 1 & 2

The campaign’s call to action was very simple and used the most basic output of social media — text — as a starting point. On an individual level this could be applied to anything from a status update to the twitter post, to a profile name or handle. But on a larger scale it could be a logo or masthead, still easy to share on social media but also intriguing and bold enough to create media interest. And so as Odeon Cinemas pulled the plug on their signage and Downing Street (the Prime Minister’s street) lost an O on its sign, the press began to jump on board too.

Source 1 & 2

The fact that the simple call to action had no strict parameters made it both easy to get involved and appealing to those who wanted to do something a little different with it.

Source

The campaign rather than unifying a single message (change your profile picture to an = sign for example) actually individualised it, creating a message that was customised by each individual, but which still lead to a tangible united action (sign up to donor list).