ALR designletter [6.4]
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Welcome to the Fall issue of the ALR Designletter. As always we welcome your comments, suggestions, criticism and/or praise. Thanks for reading. And don’t forget to visit the ALR blog for more updates and items of interest on a near daily basis at http://www.alrdesign.com/blog.
Thanks for reading,
Noah Scalin, president
ALR design
socially conscious graphic design
http://www.ALRdesign.com
[01] ALR NEWS
In July, ALR’s founder, Noah Scalin, was a guest speaker at the Small Biz Boot Camp hosted by C3 (http://www.c3va.org/) in Richmond, VA.
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ALR’s design for the Abron’s Arts Center course catalog was recently featured in an article on the Lower East Side blog LOHO 10002 (http://loho10002.blogspot.com/2006/09/abrons-style-and-substance.html).
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ALR’s logo designs for Engage, Action Alliance, Post Punk Kitchen, Vicious Cycles, Metamorphosis, and Target Margin will be appearing in a new book called Logology from Victionary (http://www.victionary.com/) due out soon.
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Please note ALR offices will be closed for vacation October 19-24th.
[02] IDEAS + ACTION
How can a group of people be both ever-present and yet so invisible? It’s a problem for the homeless that Homeless Nation is trying to tackle via its website http://www.homelessnation.org. Filmmaker Daniel Cross created the Canadian group with the idea of letting the street community share their own stories via blogs, videos, and podcasts. In one video Shawn talks about living under a highway overpass and waiting for subsidized housing. In another, a man named Raven has a simple message: “Get to know us before you judge us.”
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Video Volunteers is based on a similar idea. In 1999, the World Bank talked to 60,000 people in the developing world surviving on less than a dollar a day. When they were asked to name the biggest obstacle to improving their lives, they said that it was having no voice. So Video Volunteers is dedicated to “accelerating social change through video,” by allowing these people to broadcast their own stories. Watch for yourself: http://www.videovolunteers.org.
[03] WAR + PEACE
With apologies to our writer friends, we have to agree that a picture, as they say, can be worth a thousand words. On the Israeli/Lebanese Coffin Counter page (http://www.moiz.ca/coffin.htm), design student Moiz Syed found a compelling way to illustrate the number of deaths caused by the latest Middle East crisis. For each death, he’s posted the image of a casket covered with the flag of the deceased’s country. The most current figures he has: Israel, 163; UN, 4; Canada, 8; and Lebanon, 1,000. Moiz says he is neither Israeli nor Lebanese, just is interested in documenting human suffering.
[04] DESIGN
Communication should be accessible to everyone, including people who are visually impaired (something Target recently learned the hard way when it was sued by the National Federation of the Blind: http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Target_Sept_Release.asp?SnID=31128109). To help the colorblind – a fairly significant percentage of the population – designers (working on a Mac) can download “Color Oracle,” an application that applies a full-screen color filter to your work to show you in real time what people with colorblindness will see. It’s fast. It’s easy. It’s free. Go get it at http://colororacle.cartography.ch/.
[05] MARKETING
Ouch. The Shards O’Glass website (http://www.shardsoglass.com/) hits the advertising biz and Big Tobacco where it counts. It skewers these industries for marketing dangerous products and making them seem desirable. In this case, the product is a popsicle embedded with slivers of glass. The copy is even written in the faux concern of corporate-speak (“At Shards O' Glass, our goal is to be the most responsible, effective and respected developer of glass shard consumer products intended for adults.”). Be sure to watch their entertaining and enlightening Shards O’Glass Light commercial: http://www.shardsoglass.com/about/ad.cfm?movie=shardslight
[06] GAMES
Remember “Fantastic Voyage,” the 60s movie where Raquel Welsh gets shrunk down and injected into a body? Well HopeLab, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping young people with serious illnesses, has created a video game that’s a lot like it. Re-Mission, which is free to kids with cancer, is a 3D “shooter” starring Roxxi, the fearless nanobot. The game takes the player into the body of young people with a variety of cancers and empowers them by allowing them to zap away at cancer cells. And a recent study showed that the game actually improved their quality of life and helped them stick to their treatment regimens. Check it out at http://www.re-mission.net.
[07] CONSUMPTION
The Flow Market has a mission: to help people get their heads out of their asses and think, live and consume (or not consume, as the case may be) more holistically. The people behind this supermarket/art installation in Denmark believe that our industrialized world has created imbalances in our individual, collective and environmental flows. So they’ve stocked the shop with “products” that we all could use (inner calmness $8, holistic thinking $20, balance $5, obesity dissolver $5, stress killers $5). Happy shopping! http://www.theflowmarket.com/.
[08] RESOURCES
If you’re a designer who does work for socially conscious non-profits (or for a non-profit that works with designers), you need to check out Photoshare (http://www.photoshare.org/). On the site, photographers from all over the world share images depicting the realities of existence in developing countries as well as efforts to improve peoples’ lives and health. The photos, taken in the field by amateurs and professionals, are offered free of charge when used for educational purposes. Photographers are also encouraged to join and submit new images as well.
[09] POLITICS
America’s organic consumers are a marketing force to be reckoned with, and growing fast. Unfortunately, politicians haven’t been listening. The Organic Consumer Fund would very much like to change that and get Congress’ ear on everything from increasing organic acreage to protecting organics’ strict standards. At http://www.organicconsumersfund.org/voterguide.cfm, you’ll find an Organic Consumers Survey and instructions on how to send it to candidates in your area to see where they stand on important organic issues.
[10] TECHNOLOGY
The people at non-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC) have an amazing idea: design $100 laptops and sell them to technologically underdeveloped countries for their children. They’ve been working on a prototype called 2B1 and have what they call “a unique harmony of form and function; a flexible, ultra low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine with which nations of the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development.” Education is a beautiful thing. Target date is 2007. Have a look at http://www.laptop.org/.
[11] THE FUTURE
We’ve seen the future and it is, well, creepy. Check out genpets.com, a witty commentary on our brave new world and its fondness for genetic manipulation. The website “sells” the newly created Genpet™ in retail-ready packaging, calling it a “mass produced bioengineered pet implemented TODAY.” The site says that the Genpet, which looks like a human fetus, shows emotion (“They come in seven different personality types”) and even talks (“Genpets have limited vocal cords for the convenience of parents”). Get more details at http://www.genpets.com/.
[12] MEDIA
The Nation has once again put the American news landscape in chart form, illustrating where Americans get their news and who controls what they hear. Ten years ago when they did this for the first time, there were just a few major players. With so many media channels in existence today, the landscape has only gotten more complex – and disturbing. As The Nation says, the chart “tells us that when we are wondering whether we should trust an NBC Nightly News report on the greening of nuclear power, it is important to keep in mind that NBC’s owner, General Electric, has a more than passing interest in the development and operation of nuclear power plants.” Read more and view a pdf of the 10th Anniversary National Entertainment State chart at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060703/mediachart.
[13] LEXICON
Green Burial – n: A growing trend in the U.S. that will allow those of us who are devoted to living green to die green if we choose to. Newsvine reports that interest in natural cemeteries is growing and profiles a green cemetery in New York, where plots costs $500, bodies can’t be embalmed and headstones are a no-no. As one satisfied customer put it, "Putting bodies in a waterproof, permanent container protected from the environment, it's ridiculous." Check it out at http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2006/07/01/275218-green-burials-growing-in-popularity).
[14] NOSH
Ever heard of Half.com, Oregon, America’s first dot-com city? William Drenttel at Design Observer tells the story of the up-and-coming website that went looking for a gimmick in 1999 and found one: it bought Halfway, Oregon and renamed it Half.com. The site promised the town lots of benefits (including a call center, which would have employed many locals), but they ended up with just $110,000, 20 computers, and a town website (that is no longer functional). Half.com pulled off the publicity stunt in December 1999; 6 months later, eBay bought the site for $300 million+. And the folks that live in Half.com, OR? Well, in the words of the mayor, “yeah, we got our money and some computers, 'course that just caused some problems like money always does”. Get the whole story here: http://www.designobserver.com/archives/017370.html).
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The ALR Designletter is a semi-regular update on the activities at Another Limited Rebellion design, the world of socially conscious design, and beyond. You are on this list because you have worked with, contacted, or have a personal connection to ALR design. The names on this mailing list will never be sold or given away. If you no longer wish to be on this list, just respond with "REMOVE" in the subject section and there will be no hard feelings. Back issues can be found on our web site in the ISSUES section.
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