We ideated, we created, and now we party
AIGA Austin’s first Changemaker Series comes to an end
UPDATE: Thank you, everyone, who supported us at the Showcase last night!!! If you’re interested in getting involved next year or just want to follow along, join our email list or contact us at changemaker@austin.aiga.org.
Check out our previous posts to read about this year’s journey and follow us to read our retrospective and find out what impact our team’s projects are having once we post it.
Tomorrow, AIGA Austin’s first Changemaker Series will come to an end with the final phase: Celebrate!
The Changemaker Series Showcase will be an exhibition and design-for-good networking event designed to spark conversations how to do these kinds of projects even better, solicit Austin’s creative community’s help in growing and improving our Series, and show off the hard work of our creative project teams.
Hard work is a bit of an understatement. Project team members volunteered an enormous part of their summer to an ambitious, ambiguous, social good project involving monumental, systematic issues. They pushed themselves to think beyond traditional design deliverables to focus on creative, realistic problem-solving.
“Realistic” is key. Part of the Changemaker Series mission states that we use “sustainable frameworks” to help advance the mission of our change organization partners. The goal of our projects is to create something the orgs can sustain on their own after the Series is over. And that means keeping the limitations of the budget, time, staff, etc. of a nonprofit in mind.
What good is a marketing campaign if the organization has no marketing staff or a marketing budget? How useful is a social media strategy if there’s no one to maintain it? Is an innovative, groundbreaking solution realistic with the staff and time available, in addition to the millions of other challenges nonprofits juggle?
These considerations are just some of the many (many many) reasons we emphasize research as the most important step in the project development.
LifeWorks
The LifeWorks Austin team spent nearly the entire summer on research and found it invaluable. For illustrator and art director Mike Reddy, that process took a little getting used to.
Most of my projects as an artist/designer arrive as very clear assignments. Deciding on what product to create is not a huge part of the equation — it’s about concept and execution. And often the turnaround time is a few days or a few hours, so I don’t have a ton of time for research beyond the visuals.
With the Changemaker [Series] project, it was a challenge for me to start with a problem, and then figure out what we might create to help solve it.
We were lucky to have a few research specialists on our team who took us through a very thorough process of interviews with our clients and end-users to see what they could actually use. It was really valuable to have that data in front of us, so when we eventually got to the design phase, we knew we were heading in the right direction.
That said — the research process ate up the majority of the summer and we’ve had to compress our visual design process into a small window of time! Which is OK, since that’s what most of us designers are used to anyway…
LifeWorks org rep Julianne Hanckel quickly fell in love with the research process and was eager to share the tools she learned from her creative team with LW leadership. She says,
I was a little unsure of the ins and outs and how research could inform the final design product, but the work that was done by members of our team has already proved to be invaluable.
The compilation of the research is a deliverable among itself, and something our organization will use as a guiding light as we continue to pursue new philanthropic donors.
Rep Jasmine Brooks adds, “Learning the importance of research has really shaped the way I view design.”
Foundation for the Homeless
Of the three creative teams, the Foundation for the Homeless team encountered the most logistical difficulties during their project. Among those, they had to figure out “What happens when your project coincides with grant writing season?”
The smaller size of the FFH staff was also a huge factor in the team’s project direction. How might they affect big change without burdening the organization? How might they create a sustainable framework while recognizing things like the importance of grant writing season, and the cycles of Americorps volunteers?
The team persevered and pushed through these roadblocks and they hope to use their research to seek more resources to improve their volunteer program.
Texas Appleseed
The Texas Appleseed team had difficulties of their own. The research phase required a gut check of their challenge statement early in the project. The initial challenge was to “raise awareness” about youth homelessness so that public pressure would lead to positive policy and legislation changes.
The team’s preliminary strategies included marketing campaigns and public stunts. But they had to consider: is TA equipped to run a marketing campaign on their own? Texas Appleseed is an amazing advocate but what is their role in raising awareness for the issues they fight so hard for? Is their role to raise awareness or to educate?
Team member Paula Kwit kept the project centered on the buyer’s(advocate’s) journey, which led to the creation of a smart, templated plan that TA can easily implement for all of their projects in the future.
