I read an interesting piece in the UC Berkeley Alumni magazine, California (yes I’m an alum) about how a single statistic can profoundly change our perspective on an issue–but only if we are presented with it in a certain way (“Numberstruck” by Pat Joseph). UC Berkeley’s Michael Ranney conducted research in which he asked people… Continue Reading… Continue Reading
Previously I wrote about the notion of the economy as being made up of three sectors–public, private, and nonprofit. But recently I’ve seen a few references to “the fourth sector.” The term refers to enterprises, sometimes called social enterprises, that straddle the for-profit and nonprofit divide. social enterprises seem to ask, “how much is enough?”… Continue Reading… Continue Reading
Some designers are activists, that is to say, they take action (typically within the context of a contentious issue) intended to bring about change on behalf of a wronged or excluded group. But once designers are out of the picture, have moved on to the next job, can artifacts in themselves be activists? Can buildings,… Continue Reading… Continue Reading
The Ulm Foundation in Germany is sponsoring an interesting competition called, “Designing Politics – the Politics of Design” for which the deadline is 10th May 2008 and entries can be from anywhere in the world. The call for entries says that, “Ulm has set itself the task of conducting a discourse on the social responsibility… Continue Reading
If I seem like a booster for the nonprofit sector, it’s because mainly, I am. As I explained in “activism and the economy” I think by and large the nonprofit sector raises the bar for social and environmental performance in the public and private sectors. But recently I’ve come across a few thought-provoking pieces on… Continue Reading… Continue Reading
(Accords, Declarations, Calls to Arms, Codes of Practice, Polemics) If you need evidence that designers are struggling with the questions of activism and becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way the profession engages is social and environmental issues, you need look no further than a spate of recent manifestos, etc. Although some of them are discipline-specific,… Continue Reading… Continue Reading
All Design is Activism I’ve heard some people argue that if activism is simply of form of action intended to create change, then all design is activism. Randolph Hester, at UC Berkeley, makes this argument adding, “there is no such thing as passive design” [1]. And it’s true that a great deal of writing about… Continue Reading… Continue Reading
I explain how I define activism in the “about & contact” page, but here I’m illustrating how activism fits into the economy. In this post I first describe the economy and design’s role in it, then I investigate how activism manifests itself within this framework. The Economy First, we have to recognize that the economy… Continue Reading… Continue Reading