Hasta La Ideas

“Some call it design for the greater good. Others call it social design. Whatever you call it, it’s clear that an altruistic impulse is on the rise in the design community.”

Agreed, in fact, ever since Cooper-Hewitt’s seminal National Design Triennial, Why Design Now brought social design to a wider audience in 2010/2011, we’ve seen a veritable explosion in design with a social conscience. Designing For Social Change, a new book from Princeton Architectural Press, is a compact compendium for graphic designers looking to expand their practice with more community-based design projects. Author Andrew Shea (a fellow Core77 contributor) “presents ten proven design strategies for working effectively with community organizations” as well as “twenty inspiring case studies [that] illustrate how design professionals and students approach unique challenges when working on a social agenda.”

It’s a great resource for anyone looking to answer the call of the latest GOOD Maker Challenge to Create Your Own Crowdsourcing Competition. GOOD Maker hosts a rotating series of challenges, like designing a graphic to unite the 99 percent or applying creative problem solving to issues like financial literacy and famine in East Africa. It’s a great outlet for budding designers and social entrepreneurs as well as organizations who can propose a challenge of their own when they need a little creative kickstart.

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