Design to Make a Difference

Can you create a game on teen dating violence… without using violence? Click here to join.

Launched at the Young Social Entrepreneurs’ Forum at GK3, this E-Card’s aim is to let the world know about the work of these young people all across the globe who put together business, innovation, and heart.

Concept by Gabriele Siegenthaler Muinde and Anthony David, put together by Idea!s and Tom Estrera. Help us spread the love, copy and paste to your blogs!

S. Dev Appanah, our YSEI coordinator, contributed an article to the Beyond Tunis Flightplan 1.5 publication on design thinking for development. Wanna know how to flex the creative muscles for development beyond visual design? To read the article, click here.

Fara Manuel’s designs stem from her deep love of the natural environment. The advocacies she’s worked on range from going vegetarian, to animal rights, to renewable energy, to sustainable transport. As consistent as she is with her social commitments, is she committed to designs that are simple, cost-efficient, and evocative.

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Her college thesis is a storybook that teaches kids about the realities of fastfood.

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Fara shares the environmental designs she developed for Greenpeace.

Fara Manuel takes the mic at Design to Make a Difference.

This is an article on the event Design to Make a Difference written by one of Idea!s’ volunteers, Wilgrace Maglalang.

In October this year, Ideals Creatives, a non-profit, non-stock design group held the first in a series of talks on Design To Make A Difference. The group hopes that the “tour” will show the public how design can help effect social change.

Statistics about the ongoing destruction of the planet scares many. But the image of it melting down, as in a speaker’s opening slide, creates the impact.

Such is the power of images, specially the carefully chosen ones that speak to us and move us. The late Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner believed that a mental image or picture endures and lives long if it is brought to the “sphere of feelings.” Imagine how strongly an image can inspire change when made part of a design.

WHAT’S THE PLAN, DAN? Dan Matutina, creative director of Ideals Creatives, saw the potential of design and communications in college. “I knew early on that it can make a big difference in society,” he said. His work on Philippine National Red Cross, Philippine Pediatric Society and other NGOs as a multi-awarded art director in a multi-national ad agency seem to have strengthened this view. When he and fellow classmates at the University of the Philippines got the chance and a grant to start their own design group for a cause, they did not waste any time. Thus was born Ideals Creatives, perhaps the first design firm that is also an NGO. “We design for other NGOs, advocacies, causes and other organizations which aim to promote change in society,” Dan adds.

His work on some materials for the Asian Development Bank resulted in some changes in the way the global aid group designs its communication materials. But Dan is prouder that his team bagged the Corporate Social Responsibility Expo project this year. The event gathered the country’s companies with CSR programs making Dan and his team’s work highly visible and meaningful. His team designed everything from the logo to the stage motif, flyers, posters, to the website, working on most of them right at the venue of the expo.

“Being an NGO, our group accepts a modest fee for all our work part of which we share with other NGOS which have little or no budget at all to,” as Dan says, “inform people of the extraordinary projects of these extraordinary groups.” Their limited resources have motivated Dan’s group to be creative and resourceful. “Minsan kami-kami na rin ang crew, ang voice talent, ang director,” he admits. Much like what happened when his group produced a scholarship fund-raiser for Caritas Manila.

VEGAN BY DESIGN. While it remains unpublished, the college-thesis-cum-storybook of Fara Manuel, graphic-designer-slash-animator, seems like the stuff she is made of: courageous, uncompromising, committed. The story tells how the patty that we find in our burger (hello fastfood) came from some tortured cows, some mad and still some raised and then slaughtered in un-PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) like fashion.

It is easy to see why she has become a vegetarian. And green.

Fara has been involved in over 20 campaigns for Greenpeace since 2002, as lead and support graphic designer. Some of the logos the conservation movement has used in its campaign are hers. She also designed a material for a campaign to eat organic rice. She created some more logos, this time, for World Wildlife Fund and Speedo (yes the giant swimwear brand is also eco-friendly). She also created the icon for EJ, the country’s vision of an electric jeepney.

These projects are giant steps taken, if you may, by someone who stumbled on design as a tool for advocacy in a seminar in UP Diliman where she finished her Visual Communications degree with honors. Right now, she looks at the indigenous people as her hero for making a difference in the world. “They’ve always had a close relationship with nature and are advocates of subsistent living,” she says.

CHANGE AD-VOCATE. Rocky Sanchez, an award-winning creative director from a multinational agency, is not new to advocacy work. She is lucky to have been given the chance to work on advocacy-type advertising at the onset of her career. She enjoyed it tremendously that she asked one day, ”di ba pwedeng ganito na lang palagi ang gagawin ko?” She is lucky to have a boss who loves advocacy work as much as she does and who one day made her co-manager of Campaigns Social Response.

Today, she churns out posters, tv commercials and print ads that ask people to donate for a worthy cause; do something to prevent an epidemic; or help protect women from sexual abuse.

She is proud of her company’s work for Haribon, an organization at the forefront of environmental and wildlife conservation in the Philippines.“Right after the TV ad came out, a lot of people called to become members,”she says. And why not, the ad showed how lucky the Filipinos to have rich natural resources that are taken for granted daily. The simple, yet haunting copy is accompanied by wonderful images of our marine and eco-system.

Her work on AHON Foundation (Acts of Hope for the Nation) which promotes reading is a clever take on the Philippines’ folktales and how they can get a child to work hard, love our country or save the planet.

A fan of Al Gore, Rocky says that sometimes, to produce a CSR ad, one has to be resourceful. She had to tap her daughter as the model for the AHON material.

“Kasi wala nang budget,” she said. She also found out that in the name of public interest, big multinational brands are willing to work with advocacies. The campaign for hand washing to prevent epidemic is a good example. “Safeguard is not our agency’s client, but it went the extra mile to finally put the material in the can,” she adds.

NATURAL BUILDER. The management and students of the Ateneo School of Medicine and the Jose Rizal University have a lot to thank this architect for.

The green design of Architect Daniel Lichauco of Archion Associates makes it possible for the students to enjoy natural lighting and ventilation and the management to save a lot in power bills. The idea (for both buildings) is really simple yet clever: Architect Lichauco studied the natural flow of the wind and the source of sunlight in both venues. By harnessing the wind, he is able to allow the unhampered flow of air and breeze where it is most needed and at the appropriate time. He said that green architecture is an infant in this country and learned not to hard sell the fact that he and his group can do green design. “We let it slip in a quiet way,” he says. The “green idea” is presented as savings which more often than not, he adds, gets the client’s nod.

He admitted that green architecture could really be expensive. But he said that one can start with a green lifestyle at home by choosing the proper bulb to use.

TATS THE TRUTH. The tattoos on the tribesmen of the Cordillera region are not just an interesting subject for Baguio-born photographer Tommy Hafalla.

According to him, they are the best way to understand and appreciate the Cordilleran culture. Pointing at a tattoo on a man in a stark black-and-white photo, Tommy said that the tattoo is not merely a decorative design, not something to adorn oneself, but a mark of status or rank. Likewise, he said, that the beads and other ornaments worn by the tribal women are not for beautifying themselves; they are worn during important events and indicate, by the amount of jewelry worn, how significant they are.

Through his photographs Tommy is able to “provide his audience a way of seeing” which can correct a lot of misconceptions that have surrounded the different tribes in the Cordillera for years. Beyond becoming “cultural curiosities”, his photographs are the ideal way to educate people. This 13 Artists Award recipient plans to continue documenting the people of Cordillera the way he has since 1978.

DIRECTOR’S CUT. Erik Matti, now a byword in the ad industry, used to disdain directing tv commercials. “Syempre nung araw, iba ang tingin ko sa mga film directors,” he said of his first job. “Imagine with two projects in a year, you could already get by,” he adds. But the slowly dwindling number of movie production made him consider making ads. While he did not get the plum assignments in the beginning (“Naku, puro pre-testing materials for new products,“ he muttered), he eventually become the go-to director of many an agency.

He used to work for monetary gain and the perks that it could buy. But he realized and met some people who were making using of their art to help others. Right now, he and his friends in the industry are planning to put up a film school where, he said, students will learn the real thing — no frills, no tricks. As a “foreshadowing” of this altruistic plan, three TV commercials he made helped educate the public about how to choose a candidate. Of the lot, the most effective (based on the yuck factor exhibited by the audience) are the ones showing two men sharing a toothbrush and another one two guys sharing a bubble gum. The idea is that like the toothbrush and the gum, one’s vote is personal.

To all the speakerrs, design indeed can make a difference. One said it made her “re-evaluate things” while another said that it allowed her to “change paradigm”. Shifting the public’s point of view is after all what they are doing. For some, who are in the industry known to motivate people only to rake it in, it means re-framing, an act that involves changing or modifying the old ways of doing things for social transformation. Big words, big ideas perhaps.

But to these people and their design, it is their rationale for being and the source of so much joy for a lot of them. They may not know it, but they could be among the millions of people around the world psychologist Paul Ray calls “cultural creatives.” These individuals, counting about 50 million in America alone, “have values that involve a concern for the world, an awareness of and activism for peace and social justice,” among others, without using the old labels of right or wrong, left or right, old or new. As one writer puts it, they only see forward.

It is just a matter of time before design in our country graduates from being just eye-candy. With individuals like those mentioned above, the fight to save the ailing planet, could make it a fierce and a winning battle.

Willa is a copywriter by day, a closet poet every full moon, a change advocate and a volunteer by heart (she’s also a WWF member), a yogi wannabe, teacher and a mom 24/7.

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The thrill of advertising. Beating deadlines, flexing creative muscles and summoning the powers of persuasion to get your product across to the general public. In the adrenaline rush of juggling copy, market research, storyboards and jingles, one may find oneself in the eye of the storm, an observer thinking of how the relevance of such falls into the larger scheme of things once the winds die down. Rocky Sanchez dared to ask, and went even further by initiating Campaigns Social Response together with colleagues at Campaigns and Grey.

Check out Rocky’s presentation and find out how she managed to discover her own Happy Middle.

Rocky Sanchez presents at Design to Make a Difference.

Jan Vincent Ong of Read Now featured Design to Make a Difference in his column at the Philippine Star last week. Yay! A copy of the article can be seen here.

Enjoy!

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Dan Matutina, Creative Cheneser of Idea!s Creatives shares how five young people combine creativity and heart to form a social enterprise that provides multimedia and communications services to development organizations, and shares big ideas for uniting creatives all over the country in the name of social change.

Dan Matutina takes the mic at Design to Make a Difference.

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Here’s the first of the presentations to be uploaded! Tommy Hafalla, our speaker who came all the way from Sagada (who also incidentally, was the earliest of speakers to arrive that evening), shared photographs from his collection, while at the same time explaining particular symbols and symbolisms which are often misconstrued by a misinformed public. He uses his photographs as a means for helping others understand and appreciate the Cordillera culture, providing not just an eyeful for the aesthetics junkies, but an informed insider’s view on the culture and traditions we often see and gape at, but never fully understand.

His photographs not only preserve images of fading traditions, but speak to us of a richness of culture we Filipinos are gifted with, and must learn about.

Tommy Hafalla presents at Design to Make a Difference.

To everyone who went, thank you so much for making Design to  Make a Difference a success. We’ll be posting more updates on the site soon…