Lessons in leadership

This stunning artwork and flash animation is made to introduce the world to Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children. Twelve lessons in leadership tells her story of making a ngo succesful.
Shocked by the aftermath of World War 1 and the Russian Revolution, Eglantyne and her sister Dorothy Buxton were determined to secure improvements to children’s lives. Their goal was to create a powerful international organisation, which would extend its ramifications to the remotest corner of the globe. This was soon achieved – and Save the Children continues to build on this success.

What Inspires Sarah?

Andre from the health 2.0 blog Pulse & Signal sent me this remarkable campaign from Intel.
This campaign which is part of the Intel’s Inspire Education Series is designed to engage more people to help improve the quality of education around the world. The videos highlight the elements of education that people find inspirational, focusing on personal stories to inspire people to act in their own way.
In the video above Sarah Culberson shares her history of inspiration. Sarah, who after discovering that she is of royal African descent, goes on to form an educational foundation for children in Africa.

In the video below, actor Omar Benson Miller discusses his childhood and individuals who inspired him to do his best in life.

Get London reading

Great campaign from London where streetart and a interactive map are used to encourage Londoners to make more time for reading, and to celebrate London as an international centre for books. Stencil art is used on the streets of London to confrontate public with various book quotes and to people them aware of the dedicated website of the Booktrust: getlondonreading.co.uk.
The website contains a interactive map showing books set in the different neighborhoods.
The campaign was seen on the streets from Tuesday 25 March and ran throughout April. The campain also featured more than 20 library-based author events.

More pictures of the stencil art below and on Flickr.

Thanks John.

From Development 1.0 to Development 2.0

Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI) is promoting a better alternative to development work, Development 2.0—sustainable, collaborative, entrepreneural and not aid dependent.

KnowHow2GO: Take on the tough classes

In order to turn students’ college dreams into action-oriented goals, the American Council on Education, Lumina Foundation for Education and the Ad Council launched the KnowHow2GO campaign in January 2007. KnowHow2GO is a college access campaign aimed at low-income students and those who are first in their families to pursue higher education who are in grades 8-10. One of the campaign’s goals is to encourage students to take tough classes that colleges usually require.

KnowHow2GO recently released viral videos featuring three characters – Algebra II, Biology and the Foreign Languages – in a cage-match setting. The characters challenge students to take them on – and highschoolers are seen rising to the challenge.

Bookmarks for children

This ambient media is from Türkiye sokak çocukları vakfı, the Homeless Children Foundation of Turkey and can be seen in Istanbul.
Instead of giving out phone numbers or bank accounts for donation, a useful product was created: a bookmark. It features a child’s hand, gesturing help from others. Agency TBWA/Istanbul & TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris made different bookmarks, related to the book it was placed in. A hitchhiking hand gesture in travel books, a mudra hand gesture in meditation books, a peace hand gesture in war books etc.
The bookmarks were exhibited inside the books and sold near the cashier.

Have any books lying around?

This guerilla campaign from last year just won silver at the New York Festivals in the category WorldMedal. The campaign is from the Greenville Literacy Association (GLA), the largest community-based adult literacy program in South Carolina USA.
They needed money for their literacy programs. The bounce agency helped them organize a giant book sale. In order for the sale to work, they needed tons of books donated to their sale so they could in turn sell the books to raise money for their literacy programs. The job was to get as many books donated to GLA as possible.
The campaign title: ‘Have any books lying around?’

Don’t Abandon Your Morals

Here’s a great poster from MFA Graphic Designer at SVA in New York and Central Saint Martins graduate, Steve Haslip.

“This poster was made during my first semester class with the exceedingly wise Milton Glaser. The issue at hand was dealing with design ethics, and in an attempt to tackle the subject and further pitch my point I drew the entire image using a single line.”

Design Conferences = Overblown and Conceptually Thin

UK design critic Rick Poynor makes a socially conscious critique of Design Conferences (for Creative Review) this month. This is a very topical critique and a highly recommended read.

Why choose if you can combine?

Great and hilarious Photoshop work this combination of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (Catholic University) en Ehsal are combining college and university. There are many ways to visualize it. I’m glad Belgium agency LDV United choose this one.

Enlighten your world with a book

There are a lot of books about the Enlightenment, but none of them actually provide light. Studiomeiboom has combined this idea into a lamp which is in the form of a book. Not a heavy book, a light book. Not a book of absolute truths. It is, however, a book which sets you thinking but which does not tell you what to do. A book which will not only help you in dark days but other people as well. 

Learn what it takes to be one of the greats

In this cross media campaign the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) advertise its new Executive Masters of Design in Advertising (EMDes) program. Startup agency Huxley Quayle von Bismark from Toronto Canada shows four industry heavyweights being dissected to see what makes them tick.
Above it is Geoff Craig, vice-president and general manager, brand building at Unilever Canada lying on table.

Good 50x70

GOOD 50x70 is back for 2008! Good 50×70, the initiative that ‘promotes awareness amongst the creative community of the power they have to be a force for good,’ is back for its second year.

Entrants are asked to design posters (on as many briefs as they wish) and the best submissions will be selected by a jury of graphic design luminaries [listed below] and given to the supporting seven charities to use for global campaigns. For 2008, seven briefs fall under the themes of: Child Mortality, Global Warming, Human Rights Violation, Hunting, STDs, War Victims and Water Scarcity.

Barbara Kruger

Born in 1945, Barbara Kruger is one of my top inspirational socially conscious artists/designers. After attending Syracuse University and Parson’s School of Design in New York, Kruger obtained a design job at Condé Nast Publications. Working for Mademoiselle Magazine, she was quickly promoted to head designer. Later, she worked as a graphic designer, art director, and picture editor in the art departments at House and Garden, Aperture, and other publications. 

Conceptual Design: Building a Social Conscience.

Is there a relationship between the conceptual thinking behind Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 urinal and contemporary design practice? Design writer and Design Observer contributer Nick Currie believe’s there is. In an AIGA feature of 1995, Currie presented some interesting thoughts on the evolution of Conceptual Art and its impact on designing for social impact. Currie’s feature, Conceptual Design: Building a Social Conscience begins by exploring if there has ever been “Conceptual Design?”’ and moves on to discuss how the conceptual arts of the early 1900s has led young designers to think more about social issues than consumer goods.

“There’s a generation of young designers who, almost a century after Duchamp, seem to share something of his spirit… Rather than products, these people are designing situations, intervening in existing arrangements, framing everyday activities in ways that make us think of them, unexpectedly, as “design.” And although they’re often satirical in tone, these designers share a concern with ethics and responsibility; one of the reasons the design they make is so often immaterial is their sense that the last thing the world needs is more objects, more consumer goods. The widening ripples of Duchamp’s gesture blend, in their work, with the repercussions of a gathering concern around issues like sustainability, community and responsibility: to be conceptual is, after all, to be thoughtful. ”

[article continues...]

The Real Work Experience

Communication designers and its graduates, certainly have the creative ability to make significant change to social and public service, and yet I question why this is not sold to designers as a credible route to take post Graduation. Pitching the fact that only 23.2% of design graduates will find jobs in the creative industry itself, London based [public sector] design agency ThinkPublic, introduce The Real Work Experience.

The Real Work Experience aims to open design graduates’ eyes to the opportunities of using their skills beyond the usual design roles and the possibility of working in the public sector. Concurrently, the programme aims to educate public sector bodies on the skills and value designers can bring to their organisations. This is one of the most inspiring and much awaited initiatives I have seen for a long time. The situation so many design graduates find themselves in is frightening, and yet there are so many possible avenues to vehicle our talents toward. To see more photos of the first launch event held in London late 2007, see Flickr.

INDIGO: International Indigenous Design Network

The INDIGO: International Indigenous Design Network is a research initiative, which explores the role of indigenous visual culture within contemporary society and looks at its relationship to National identity. The issues and pressures facing indigenous cultures around the globe are similar. INDIGO’s aim is to encourage and promote constructive exchange between the worlds’ indigenous communities. The objective - to help to elevate the profile of indigenous design by encouraging contemporary interpretation of traditional techniques and themes.

Talk to your patients

This campaign called “Don’t Be Silent” is part of an initiative from the New York State Department of Health to confront health care providers, like physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners, to encourage their patients who smoke to quit. Research has found that only 27% of doctors in NY State talk to their patients about smoking, despite the fact that 70% of smokers want to quit.
The $1.3 million cutting-edge campaign features graphic images of health care providers with their mouths stitched or taped shut to dramatize how doctors can help.

RISE-NOW against sexual assault and domestic violence

Undergraduate students in my socially conscious design class Design Rebels at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia are required to create a project that reaches the community beyond the school to talk about some of the issues covered in the course. The RISE-NOW campaign is one of two projects that came from the Fall 2007 semester.

The goal of RISE-NOW is to spread awareness of resources available to survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. The students created four posters, a website filled with local and national resources, and a brochure (several of which were attached to each poster in a small paper holder). The posters, which were hung up in local bars, restaurants, and stores as well as on campus, are available as hi-res downloadable PDFs.

Save the OLPC, save the world

Masi Oka, aka Hiro from TV series Heroes, is taking his role on a new level with an ad for the “Give One Get One” campaign.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative allows you to donate the XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution, and has been extended through the end of the year.

One in five people are illiterate

These ads (more inside), made by Ivan Cash and Logan Broadley, won Silver at this years Loerie Awards in the category Student awards: Newspaper & Magazine Advertising.

Classmates

A video for Caritas Manila, the lead Catholic agency for social services and development in the Archdiocese of Manila and a lead provider of technical assistance to social service and development ministries in the five other Metro Manila dioceses. 

Let the game continue

The long term

Our work

Crying ink

Wow, this looks so simple but this is such a strong visual.
What to say more, this must be a price winner next year.
Don’t let our girls stay uneducated.

Watch Around Water

This is a example of very bad shockvertising.
‘Watch Around Water is an education and awareness raising campaign run throughout public aquatic facilities in Western Australia. The campaign was developed to address growing industry concern regarding the supervision of children whilst visiting aquatic facilities. Watch Around Water takes a comprehensive approach to promoting and encouraging adequate supervision of children by parents and appropriate centre policies and practices.’
I understand, I got a daughter myself. And I could handle such a creepy underwater ad. But how would children react? They don’t understand, I’m sure.
(via via)

100 people

From the website: The idea of reducing the world’s population to a community of only 100 people is very useful and important. It makes us easily understand the differences in the world.
There are many types of reports that use the Earth’s population reduced to 100 people, especially in the Internet. Ideas like this should be more often shared, especially nowadays when the world seems to be in need of dialogue and understanding among different cultures, in a way that it has never been before.

Visit the Miniature Earth

Know what to do

What would you do if you saw a person lying at the bottom of a stairwell?
Good guerilla from the Red Cross Canada situated in the Cineplex Odeon Theatres in Toronto. Mission is to shock people so they understand how important it is to learn first aid.
If you come closer to the ‘ad’ the accompanying copy signs ‘Know what to do’.