Connecting Carers: Developing category 2.
Connecting Carers: Working on my second ‘species’. Like Carolin Horn did in Anymails, I am creating characters that will replicate my respondants. I am currently splitting my caring respondents into three groups. The first group is ‘category of care’ (i.e. broadly, what condition the cared for person has). I’m working with 4 categories: mental health, learning disabilities, physical disabilities and visual and hearing disabilities. Using very abstract shapes, I’m creating a species for each of them.
Current Project: Connecting Carers
For anyone who might be following my blogging, I’d better briefly explain my project. It involves carers (unpaid) in the UK.
Every year 2.3 million people in the UK become carers, and it takes on average 3 years for a new carer to connect with help (Carers UK). It goes without saying that being a carer, although it is a labour of love, it is hard work and can often be isolating.
There are many carers who do get help (e.g. respite, funding, support) and it can be a life-changing thing. Therefore I’m creating a platform where carers can post a ‘story of hope’ to other carers, of the positive stories regarding this area. This is aimed at new carers, or carers who might be isolated, so they can connect to these same places.
Current Project: Choosing the right icon.
Carolin Horn: Carolin’s work has helped inspire my current project. This is Anymails, a visualisation of her email inbox. Each species signifies a different subject of email, and the vibrancy/faded colour signifies age of an email. You can also get hybrids! I think its a really beautiful way to show information.
Current project: Trying to ‘characterise’ information. Experimenting with shape and legibility.
Current project: Testing image size.
Graphic Patrick: Set of beautiful modernist posters on the subject of mental health. Simple, uncluttered and informative.
Major Project - ( RED ) designed to help eliminate AIDS
Design for a good cause doesn’t have to be persuasive posters. It can be less direct than that. RED seeks to raise money for AIDS through the sale of certain products. If you buy products that are linked to RED, a specified amount of money automatically goes to ‘The Global Fund’. Plenty of big companies are involved, and the idea is to eradicate AIDS by 2015.
My final project could be very direct and to the point - or it could look at a different, new way of connecting with people. RED does this brilliantly.
Major Project - Responsible graphics
An extract from ‘Being Good’ by Lucienne Roberts, an online article for Eye written in 2006:
“Graphic design is generally a rhetorical art – its job is to persuade – so do we have a responsibility to be mindful of what we are persuading people to do? We might, for example, argue that creating desires for things that people don’t really want or need is ultimately damaging both to the people concerned and to the environment on which we all rely. We may therefore not want to participate in doing this. Alternatively, we may see constant demand as a prerequisite to a successful capitalist society and argue that this is broadly for the good.”
Generally, I think I fit into the first category. As graphic designers, as Lucienne Roberts puts it, our job is to persuade. I think we have to understand this responsibility - think before blindly designing something.
Major Project - Amy Smith on simple, lifesaving design
In the video in the previous post, Amy Smith (2006) talks about one of her design projects. She describes how she got to the lifesaving outcomes that she did:
- First she noticed an issue. She realised that one of the biggest health issues on the planet is breathing the smoke from indoor cooking fires. A shocking statistic, and one you could tell she was passionate about changing.
- Next she went to the people it affected and tried to understand their needs. She talks about her trip to Haiti. She says 98% of Haiti is deforested (in 2006), but people need cooking fuel from somewhere and would keep chopping down trees and using them for charcoal. They had no other choice.
- Then she tried to look at how to change this issue, using materials readily available to local people. Her and a group of students tried and developed a different, cleaner type of fuel using local materials in a way that could be sustained by locals.
It was inspiring to see the work she has done all over the world. I hope to use her process and outcome as inspiration for my final project.
I love the way Amy Smith has worked through the projects, and the simple yet life-saving outcomes that have come from it. I’m sure this can inspire me, even if I do end up looking at something based in the UK rather than something worldwide.
Major Project - What cause?
Its fine to say: I’m going to design for a cause, but which cause? Will it be in the UK or linked to Africa? Will it be health related? I think there are some key things I have to consider before I dive into a project:
- What am I passionate about? It has to be a cause that I feel needs designing for - something that I feel passionately about.
- In general terms, where am I designing for? UK? Africa? Ghana? Need to decide this early on.
- What issues are current? What is affecting people today?
Having given it a bit of thought, I’ll focus on issues in the UK. I’ll find it much easier to connect with a project thats happening where I live, instead of elsewhere.
Major Project - Designing for a cause
My time in Ghana showed me where design is actually needed. In most cases, design is a luxury. In the case of designing for causes like the ones in the previous post, design is very necessary.
For my final project, I want to be designing something for a cause.
Major Project - Health design in Ghana
These are two AIDS/HIV posters in Accra, Ghana.
The health posters I saw were generally confused in their message - such an important message can’t be confused!
