ideas

Can design change the world? Of course. The challenging part is figuring out how to best harness the power of design to make a difference, for clients and causes alike. A pioneer of this tricky, potent, you-know-it-when-you-see-it combination of design thinking and social entrepreneurship has been Worldstudio, the New York-based marketing and design agency that specializes in creating and implementing programs for corporate clients that support their social responsibility platforms. Between projects for the likes of Adobe and The Metropolitan Opera, Worldstudio principal Mark Randall co-founded (with Steven Heller) Impact! Design for Social Change, a six-week summer intensive at the School of Visual Arts that is now in its third year. Meanwhile, interest in the field of design for social impact is surging, and as Randall and friends gear up for a March 1 panel at SVA on the social design job market (a taped webcast will be posted online following the event), we asked him to tell us more about how good design can do good.

How do you define “social design”?
This is a great question, and one that the design community is slowly defining. In the broadest sense, social design uses design thinking and creativity to improve the human condition and to ensure a sustainable future for us all. A social design approach can be applied to a wide range of areas; non-profits and NGOs, civic design, corporate social responsibility, as well as social enterprise and social entrepreneurship.

Was there a particular project or point in your career that got you interested in social design, or was it an area that you gravitated to more gradually?
As a kid growing up in the 1970′s I was engaged by the ecology movement and Woodsy the Owl—”Give a Hoot! Don’t Pollute!” In 1993, David Sterling, who at the time was a partner in the legendary firm Doublespace, approached me to design a logo for a concept business that he was developing. He wanted to create a design studio that incorporated a social agenda into the work that was done on a daily basis. His ideas were unformed at the time, and as we worked on the identity together we discovered that we viewed the world—and design—in much the same way. Our conversations helped to shape what the business could and ultimately would be. Instead of being his designer I became his business partner. David left the business almost ten years ago, but I have continued the work that we do with a great group of collaborators.
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Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

In a move that we hope will land him the network-TV variety show he so richly deserves, Chip Kidd will give a talk at this year’s TED Conference, which gets underway on February 27 in Long Beach, California. The charismatic author, editor, art director, book jacket designer, Batman expert, and rock star will lead off a March 1 session entitled “The Design Studio,” according to the program line-up released today. Kidd will be followed onto the TED stage by Andrew Bolton, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, who may shed some light into the global phenomenon that was “Savage Beauty” (he organized the McQueen blockbuster) or just help to get the audience thinking outside their boxy polos and khakis. Rounding out the session is IDEO founder and Stanford professor David Kelley, who is expected to address his passion for “unlocking the creative potential of people and organizations to innovate routinely.”

Meanwhile, New Yorkers have a couple of imminent opportunities to get their Kidd fix (and wouldn’t Kidd Fixx be a great name for that TV show?). Tomorrow evening, the Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art hosts an evening of Bat-Manga. Kidd will discuss the Japanese Bat-mania phenomenon, the basis for his 2008 book, amidst the museum’s current exhibit of original artwork and lavish cover art from the Batman-manga comics. And on Thursday, January 26, he’ll be on hand for “The Next Chapter,” an AIGA/NY-sponsored look at e-publishing dynamics. What does Kidd know about digital publishing and the future of the book? Absolutely nothing, so he’ll be moderating a panel of people who actually do, including Carin Goldberg, Craig Mod (500 Startups, Flipboard), and Jeremy Clark (Adobe).

Jerry Saltz may absolutely hate the New Museum‘s Carsten Höller exhibition, “Experience,” but he seems perhaps alone in a city that is clamoring to get in. Calling it “arty junk food” and writing that “nothing provides much in terms of form, social commentary, or the willful transformation of materials,” Saltz takes issue in New York‘s year-end recap with not just the Höller exhibition, but all shows that turn museums as playgrounds (semi-surprisingly he includes Marina Abramovic‘s controversial LAMOCA fundraiser in this camp). But like we said at the opening, it appears that the critic’s camp is less full than those embracing it. NewYorkology was the first to break the story that, due to overall demand to see the Höller exhibition, the New Museum is hiking up its entry fee from $12 to $16, to help cover the cost of the extra staff they need to run it (which makes sense once you see that 102-foot slide). However, worry not, people who only have $12 to their name: the New Museum tells the site that the new rate “is most likely not a permanent increase.”

With artist Ai Weiwei gaining ever-more international praise and growing more vocal in speaking out against the Chinese government, as well as vowing to fight against the tax evasion charges he’d been hit with, it felt like it was only a matter of time before his perpetual sparing partner hit back. Now it looks to have either just happened or is but the first step in the return volleys. The government has reportedly taken in his assistant for questioning over one of the artist’s pieces, “One Tiger, Eight Breasts,” which featured Weiwei and four women, all nude, sitting in a studio. Claiming the assistant was spreading pornography on the internet, he was ultimately released, but now Weiwei believes that this might be the next major charge leveled at him by the government (an initial charge of distribution of pornography was brought up during his mysterious, three-month detainment this summer, but the authorities seem to have wanted to focus more on the tax charges). Since his assistant’s release, in a show of solidarity, a number of fellow Chinese artists and other international supporters have uploaded nude photos of themselves individually or in groups, including one “with images of Ai’s head superimposed over their genitals and nipples.” In response to this latest effort by the government, Weiwei has said, “If they see nudity as pornography, then China is still in the Qing dynasty” and has called upon his allies to harass state-run media outlets and those paid by the government to denounce him online, by providing their phone numbers on his Twitter feed.

Since Werner Herzog’s 3D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams was such a big hit earlier this year, should we now expect a follow up, wherein the adventurous director travels to the wilds of central London and dares enter a small apartment? If you’re a certain professor of archeology at the University of York, you apparently might consider it. The Telegraph reports that a handful of cartoons drawn by John Lydon (or Johnny Rotten) of the Sex Pistols have been discovered behind a cupboard in what are now offices. The archeologist in question is Dr. John Schofield who has compared the find with the cave paintings at Lascaux in France, or at the very least, perhaps even more important than the “lost early Beatles recordings” the BBC found in the mid-90s. In that case, Schofield is careful to remind that a producer at the time of that finding said the discovery was “like finding Tutankhamen’s tomb,” so his comparison to ancient cave paintings shouldn’t sound so absurd. That said, the Guardian‘s Johnathan Jones isn’t buying any of it. Writing that “archeologists should know better” and that anyone from that field who agrees with the importance of the find is merely doing so “to provoke their own profession” without really understanding that modern culture constantly “glorifies the immediate.” In a general sense, his argument seems to boil down to: why stoop to pop culture’s level when there’s legitimate, albeit less sexy, work to be done? Our personal addendum is that, while we genuinely like Lydon’s drawings, and realize their importance to the comparatively very recent history of music, isn’t it a bit premature to label something a major archeological find when the guy who drew them is still alive, and could likely redraw the same cartoons today?

Currently making all the rounds and well worth the 4:22 it takes to watch the whole thing, is the latest film by The Color Machine, Khoi Vinh: On the Grid. It’s a great conversation with everyone’s favorite former NY Times design director and ongoing lover of all things clean and functional. So please allow us to shut up for a second and let the pro do the talking…

“Every artist gets asked the question, ‘Where do you get your ideas?’” says Austin Kleon. “The honest artist answers, ‘I steal them.’” This is the first of 10 pieces of advice that the Austin, Texas-based writer and artist offered to an assembly of college students earlier this year. Last week, Kleon inked a deal to develop his life lessons into a book, Steal Like an Artist: a “guide to the creative life for makers in the digital age” that is slated for publication by Workman Press in March, just in time for his SXSW panel with Kirby Ferguson. Until then, you can find the annotated lecture slides on his website. They offer valuable tips on everything from achieving professional success (“The Secret: Do good work, then put it where people can see it.”) to staying inspired (“Side projects and hobbies are important.”). “More very soon,” promised Kleon in a blog post announcing the book deal. “In the meantime, there’s a new book page with pictures of the work-in-progress, and I’m posting deleted scenes and research on my Tumblr.”
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It’s Free Candy Night, do you know where your costume is? We’re going to bathe in glitter and baby oil, throw on some Jimmy Choos, and go as a Marilyn Minter work. That should bring in a respectable haul of Hershey’s. Those still in the brainstorming phase should consult the “Spooky Sketches” that Chelsea Zalopany has rounded up for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, which invited fashion designers including Sophie Buhai and Lisa Mayock of Vena Cava, Peter Som, and Bibhu Mohaptra to turn everyday objects—yarn, clothes hangers, fake flowers—into killer Halloween costumes. Pamela Love scored the meta-material: candy. The New York-based jewelry designer, known for fierce creations inspired by everything from astrology and the American Southwest to the work of artists such as Hieronymous Bosch and Joseph Cornell, seized upon the humble gummy bear. Love reimagined the Haribo favorite as a gummy grizzly in a sassy shade of blue. “I upped the volume to design a slightly sinister, carnival-esque version of the classic gummy bear,” she told T. “It’s very me—a little dark, but still whimsical and fun.”

After last week’s surprise drubbing at the hands of the National Capitol Planning Commission and members of the Eisenhower family, architect Frank Gehry got himself out in front of the debate earlier this week to try and smooth the situation over a bit concerning his planned Eisenhower Memorial in Washington DC. At the meeting last week, you might recall, the NCPC still wasn’t certain about the dimensions and scope of the project, while some members of the Eisenhower family asked that the whole project be put on hold, wanting to slow the whole thing down so they’d be able to think it all through more clearly. The Washington Post reports that in a meeting on Tuesday evening, Gehry admitted that the issues people were having with the memorial were “fair” and that they “are asking good questions.” What’s more, the architect reportedly explained that this is the sort of project that takes on lots of thinking and revisions as it goes along, and that he’s planning to agree to the family’s request for a meeting to make sure he gets the memorial right. “We’re clearly going to make them happy,” he told the Associated Press. Though if none of that works in appeasing everyone, we bet that Gehry will have no choice but to reassemble his Super Tech Squad and demand things go his way…or else.

You know when a comic book publishing company decides to gather up all their best-selling characters and put them all together for a series, a la the Superfriends or The Avengers? That sort of thing happened for real this week, so long as you replace “superheros” with “super successful architects.” Yesterday, Frank Gehry‘s company, the aptly named Gehry Technologies, which consults architecture firms in technology issues and has its own 3D modeling application, formed a “strategic alliance dedicated to transforming the building industry through technology.” This group is described as being formed “to drive technology innovations that support the central role of design in the creation of culture” and includes pretty much everyone whose names or firms regularly appear on shortlists for high-profile project. Zaha Hadid is there, as is Skidmore, Owings & Merrill‘s Chairman Emeritus David Childs, David Rockwell, Moshe Safdie, and Ben van Berkel, co-founder of UNStudio, among other highly-notable luminaries. They were all together yesterday for this inaugural meeting, at the Freedom Tower in New York no less, which must have been something to see. Sadly, we must report that no supervillians (not even the anti-modernist Prince Charles) showed up and thus, no super battles took place. However, they’ve stated that they plan to all get together to meet once per year, so here’s hoping for 2012.