Des493 Fall2008 Project 2

Project: Social-oriented design

 

Students:

 

Balogh, Samantha

Bollen, Kirsten

Braddy, Jerome

Connors, Diane

Foht, Andrea

Fok, Tiffany

Giacometti , Alejandro

Johnson, Camryn

Jung, Soohyun Liz

Lau, Angel

MacRae, Cameron

McKay, Courtenay

Ott, Alyssa

Wong, Gaby

Wong, Garry

 

Instructor: Carlos Fiorentino

Teaching Assistant: Kathleen Jacques

 

An awareness campaign:

Environmental Refugees & Climate Driven Migration

 

This project introduces issues concerned with how design can make a difference in addressing sustainability. Today, designers have to assume a leading role in this matter, in order to guide consumers, industry and policy makers to find the natural patterns that society needs in order to achieve sustainable development. Among a large variety of design actions that can address design for sustainability issues (DfS), social-oriented design –or social marketing– is one of the most challenging types of visual communication design projects.

This project is about designing a campaign to give awareness about environmental refugees & climate driven migration, one of the increasing cultural and social problems as a result of climate change. This phenomenon is going to be increasingly worse for future generations if public opinion and decision makers do not urgently take account and try to address the source of the problem. Visual communication design can play a leading role in this matter, not only by delivering information but also by taking actions that can help to change human behavior and modify policies. This design quest was intended to deal with strong constraints deeply installed in our western society, such as denial, greed and apathy. The experience of designing an awareness campaign in this matter allowed students to deeper understand DfS principles, apply them to other design fields in the future, consider new parameters for design decisions, and enrich their design thinking.