The Social Good

In my own personal practice, I’ve consistently used my design expertise for the social good. Whether that is through pro-bono relationships with non-profit orgs or making connections for students to work directly with clients on cause-based initiatives.

Posters are one of the most effective ways to connect with different communities as they can be placed specifically and thoughtfully for the most impact. I’ve partnered with Good 50 x 70 (Milan); Poster for Tomorrow (Paris) and the United Nations Human Rights Council (Geneva) to spread the word about access to healthcare, clean energy, climate change, human rights and other important issues that impact humans and the planet.

Other social-cause based initiatives include: Leading a social communication workshop at NABA in Milan for graduate-level design students; developing a course entitled Design + Society which focuses solely on how to align design for the social good; setting up a faculty learning circle on How to Diversify Your Courses as part of a Teaching Scholar Award and partnering with a diverse team from HATCH to develop a racial equity “tool kit” called RoundTable.

Climate Change Bites

Climate Change Bites Poster
Poster for Tomorrow TOP TEN
Paris, France, Dec 8, 2016–Jan 30, 2017

Benefits of Burning Coal

The Benefits of Burning Coal Poster
Poster for Tomorrow 100
Paris, France, Dec 8, 2016–Jan 30, 2017

Poster for Tomorrow concurrent exhibition sites:
Aix En Province, France; Le Renouard, France; Cairo, Egypt; Ankara, Turkey; Istanbul, Turkey; Doha, Qatar; Chelyabinsk, Russia; Florence, Italy; Karachi, Pakistan; Kermanshah, Iran; Tabriz, Iran; Quito, Ecuador; Guayaquil, Ecuador; Morocco; Mumbai, India; Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Thessaloniki, Greece

Both posters address different aspects of climate change. In Climate Change Bites, the mosquito’s legs are a visual portmanteau of legs + rifles to communicate the threat of increased mosquito populations due to warming temperatures. In Benefits of Burning Coal, sarcasm is utilized to emphasize that burning fossil fuels not only contributes to climate change, but it creates unhealthy environments for global citizens.

Climate Change Bites (by being selected into the TOP TEN) was added to the permanent collection of these museums:
Les Arts Decoratifs de Paris (in The Louvre)/Paris, France; Museum of the Image (Moti) Breda/The Netherlands (Holland); The V&A Museum/London, England; Lahti Poster Museum/Lahti, Finland; Designmuseum Danmark/Copenhagen, Denmark

Human Rights Equals Peace
human rights book
human rights poster collection
human rights book

Due to the success of my work getting selected in the Poster for Tomorrow competition, I was invited as one of only 6 Americans to create a poster specifically in support of the 70th Anniversary of the United Nations Resolution for Human Rights. Other American designers included Milton Glaser, Seymour Chwast and Paula Scher. It was humbling to be in that company as part of this project. The 100 posters from designers around the world were published in a commemorative edition.

The poster concept utilizes a copy of the original Human Rights Resolution to form a torch. This drops the not so subtle hint that there is a need to continue to carry a torch for human rights around the world. The flame/dove mashup cements that human rights (when applied) help preserve Peace.

2018
Frankfurt City Hall, Frankfurt, Germany, Feb 10–16
Unesco World Headquarters, Paris, France, Mar 27
Geneva Int’l Airport Geneva, Switzerland, Apr 15–Jun 30
United Nations, Geneva, Switzerland, May–Jun
Palais de Congrés, Bordeaux, France, Jul
other locales: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Valencia, Spain; Madrid, Spain

2017
La tour Saint Jacques, Paris, France, Dec 5–Jan 20, 2018
Palais de Chaillot, Paris, France, Dec 10

Human Rights = Peace Poster
70th Anniversary of the UNHCR Exhibitions + Book

Empty Calories poster

Empty Calories Poster
Good 50x70, 2009
Triennale Design Museum, Jun 19–Jul 12

Poverty is Over
Good 50x70, 2010
Piazza Cordusio, Oct 15–31 (just steps from the Duomo)

In 2009, one of my poster submissions was selected as part of the Good 50x70 Social Communication Project Exhibition. The poster, Empty Calories, compares nuclear power to soda. It may taste great in the moment, but it offers no nutritional value. Nuclear power appears immediately cleaner and better for the environment than fossil fuel alternatives, but storing nuclear waste hasn’t been sustainably resolved. The exhibition premiered at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, then traveled to the Green Social Festival in Bologna, Italy; the Norrbottens Museum in Lulea, Sweden; and Beit Meirov Gallery in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Graniph, a Japanese t-shirt online retail shop, in a joint venture with Good 50x70, chose six concepts from the 210 posters that were in the Good 50x70 Exhibition 2009. My poster concept “Empty Calories” was one of those six. The sale of these shirts raised money for Good 50x70 outreach projects around the world. Graniph paid ¥50,000 (approx. $630) to Good 50x70 as the licensing fee for “Empty Calories”. The “Empty Calories” shirt sold almost 1000 units at ¥2300 (approx $29) and a portion of those shirt sales were also donated back to Good 50x70.

The Good 50x70 Social Communication Project Exhibition in 2010 featured 210 posters, selected by a prestigious international jury including Woody Pirtle (USA) and Massimo Vignelli (USA). 81 countries were represented. My poster “Poverty is Over” was one of the chosen. The exhibition took place in the Piazza Cordusio, in the heart of Milan, Italy from October 15–31, 2010. This poster suggests human rights equality is a way to end poverty. It expresses through wordplay two things: we wish poverty would end, but also that poverty as a concept should be passé.

Good outside
empty calories in exhibition
moleskine

The Good 50x70 Social Communication Project premiered on American soil at Montana State University, where my connections with the founders facilitated an on-campus exhibition of 212 posters for three weeks, a social poster workshop led by Pasquale Volpe and a symposium on social advocacy held at The Ellen Theatre in Bozeman. The exhibition was subsidized by the College of Art and Architecture, a NSF Epscor grant and a grant from the Montana Arts Council. Later, the competitions were documented and published in a special edition book published by Moleskine. Empty Calories and Poverty is Over were included.

Pitch Deck Start
Pitch Deck User Testing
Pitch Deck Feedback

In 2020, I spent seven weeks in a Hatch Impact Lab, focused on racial equity: https://hatchexperience.org/impact-labs. Our team, a diverse group from both coasts, worked to create a racial equity toolkit, envisioned as “Cards for Humanity” playing cards—tentatively titled RoundTable, with the purpose of facilitating productive discussions about race and racial justice—targeted to families and their friends.

We’ve been working on this project ever since our first collaboration at the Hatch Lab. Having finished two rounds of prototyping, we have now developed content for 150 cards. The cards look at encouraging both learning and direct action from participants.

The project won Judge’s Choice at the Montana State University Social Entrepreneurship Competition.

Learn Cards are focused on sharing information about Black history, bias and discrimination as well as Black achievements that are not covered well in history books; Temperature Check Cards are focused on creating safe environments for continued play; Action Cards are used at the end of play to give participants an opportunity to continue exploring and advocating for racial equity; Chill Cards are game play “checks” which can be utilized to address heated conversations should they arise; Reflection Cards provide ample opportunity to reflect and synthesize learning in real-time; Ground Rules Cards are focused on setting up game play on the right track. All of these cards are still in the prototype stage. Hopefully we will acquire some external funding and can put these cards into production with more sophisticated illustrations and add deck expansions that cover beyond the Black experience.

RoundTable Team: Katie Moyer, Meta Newhouse, Yolanda Ramseur and Trey Sullivan

Photos of prototype card play are by Yolanda Ramseur