Good Indeed

This I found a while ago on a bench – when the weather was a bit warmer and sunnier – when I was waiting for the bus. It is a commercial for a new movie. Nice interaction!

2 weeks ago Involve Yourself – an Norwegian organisation which has the aim to engage and involve youth in causes as human rights and injustice – asked me to conceptualise and design postcards, will involve people actively in the campaign they are launching now. In a brainstorm we came up with the following:

front side

back side

This I promise card hopes to encourage people to make a pledge, which can be big or small. So for instance: “I promise to be nicer to my little sister” or “I promise to turn off the light when I leave a room” or “I promise to do community work at..” etc.

The thought behind these postcards is to make the users think and reflect in a playful way:the users will write the promise at the spot and address it to themselves. Involve Yourself will send the postcard a year later, reminding you of your engagement!

front side

back side

For this card the concept is that the writer/sender asks an artist (4 famous Norwegian singers) to include his/her sentence in the artist’s new song to support human rights. The sentence will be written on the front side of the card.

The artists don’t know about this!! So the senders are contributing sentences and asking the singer to write a song with him/her. I am very curious for the results, but I think this is a perfect interface, to engage the individual – and the idol as ambassador for the cause – in a larger dialogue.

How cool is it if you can write a song together with your idol, which supports an important cause!?!

To make it playful for user and receiver, the text below is added vertically in the middle of the card.

back side

We used the same concept for King Harald, only here the sender sends in a new years resolution/suggestion for the King’s New Year’s speech. Again creating an interface between the individual and authority.

Another task they gave me was to create speech bubbles inspired by the Bubble Project of Ji Lee

Several texts of the involve yourself campaign are placed in the bubble, hoping to raise awareness about the  the problems we have at this moment and to act now. FACE IT.

It’s been a while and soon I will start to write regularly again. Now a short response I received upon the tasks I provided during my graduation exhibit at Doga.

To clarify, the task was: make drawings around trash in the street. (in this case dog poo)

After two years of delivering wonderful services my hard disk broke. That’s why I haven’t been posting that much, next to that post-MA-what-is-next..So my apologies. I haven’t checked my back ups yet, hence I am not sure if I still have pictures of my examination. It will follow in a week or so I hope. Also the pictures of my graduation exhibition got lost in the break-down. I am trying to gather them from family and friends.

For now some pictures of the test-project I did at the exhibition at Doga

I used old packaging of coffee, yogurt, olives, etc as wrappings. Inside there were business cards, a reminder (to collect goodness/happiness) and a task. Below some examples!

A successful workshop with Louder happened last Friday. The strategy:

* Detach people from what they know and what they normally do
* Place them in a new setting and challenge them. Make it playful and (inter)active
* Experience new ways of exploring creativity and gain new resources to find inspiration
* Aim and outcome will be that the individuals in the team will feel more comfortable and confident in their ideas

I divided the team into 3 groups. Each group received several envelopes containing:

1) location
2) playful task to get out of your comfort-zone.
3) assignment for research and/or observation
4) the actual briefing with a client, aim and target group

TEAM 1
1) go to RÃ¥dhusplassen
2) write down your wish on the pavement or a wall. Do it big.
3) collect wishes (25-50) from random people, write them down and film it. Ask for instance:

– what’s your wish for today?
-what good news have you gotten recently?
– where would you wish to wake up tomorrow morning?
-make a wish for someone else
4) CLIENT: The Pope
BRAND: Hope
TASK: We need more optimism.What makes you happy? Create a product/message/service for optimism. Preferably an interaction where people can share and exchange hopes and wishes
Target Group: 18-35

TEAM 2
1) go to St. Hanshaugen Park
2) Introduce yourself to 5 random people. Pretend you are skiing (I gave them 2 tasks, since they didn’t have a hard time executing them.
3) observe people in Kaffebrenneriet: how do they socialize; how do they interact; what do they order; how is the interior? List all actions done there. Take notes.
4) Client: Kaffebrenneriet
Task: Kaffebrenneriet wants to profile themselves not only as a coffee to go place, but have their clients more socially involved. They want to introduce a new concept: Social Coffee. It comes with 3 new coffees and it needs a (social) activity. Create a(n interactive) concept
Target Group: 15-35 yrs

TEAM 3
1) Go to Oslo Sentralstasjon
2) Go to Stasjonskontoret Ask for Håvard Svendsen and show the mail in this envelope. You should get a spot assigned next to café La Baguette near track 13-19.
3) Create a temporary open office for problem solving. Go to café La Baguette (track 13-19) report yourself. They have some furniture for you there is some material there as well. Make yourself at home!
Ps. Giving solutions is 1 thing, making the client feel happy&smart is another. If possible give people tools for finding the solution (e.g. the Anger Management Kit)
4) CLIENT: anyone/ everyone
BRAND: Louder
TASK: Today you have an open office, random people can come with any problem and you will try to find creative solutions at the spot. Promote Louder and follow up on: Actions speak louder than words.
Your task is to brainstorm live and promote yourself: Impro-Marketing. Sell your services for free.

I connected the last team to my KNOTREALLY problem blog. I made an event for it on facebook, to redirect more people to the open office at Oslo central station.

To see picutures of the workshop visit my flickr

It has been a busy and fruitful week!

On Monday I did a workshop with the students from the Black Nordic Theater. We worked with the problems from knotreally.tumblr.com and came up with several different approaches to use them to bring reflection upon our behavior. It is interesting to see how Design can meet Theater and Theater can meet Design. I think both fields have a way of storytelling and we will merge them together to come with a new way of expressing! We will go out and experiment with social dialogue in the public space on the 4th of February, so be aware!!

Then on Thursday I had an interim meeting with the external examiner, who gave some good criticism telling me to think about my end result and how I am going to communicate my ideas and process in a clear and exciting way. Also clarifying what the design in my project is, since it is very theoretical and about the process and method. In my view the design in my project is design thinking and experimenting with this in all kind of different settings: open-closed, direct-indirect, professional-guerrilla, in order to find creative solutions in the process. Another thing he mentioned is that I should be thinking about how I am going to present this at the End of the Year Show.  In other words: what am I going to end up with? I have several ideas about this 1) a Design Method for Change ( a manual), where I am the neutral agent bringing reflection to cause change 2) Event. If all my plans work out I would like to bring it all together in a happening, which is social, playful and reflective. For instance the SOCIAL EVENT, but also when thing don’t work out, I think I should do it anyway and call it the NONE EVENT or the Unsuccessful Event to draw out the conclusions!

Yesterday I had a meeting as well with Louder, a marketing agency. There I will do a workshop as well. This will be all about provoking creativity. Especially since they would like to include the whole office more into the creative process and now it are mainly 3 persons doing that. My challenge is to challenge the team in a playful way to put their fears aside and dare to come up with ideas without judgement.

I found this image of a lightswitch on http://afrison.de it’s an advertisement for viagra, Idea and design by Einav Jacubovich

Great interaction I would say!!

I have designed a sticker to put on a light switch as a reminder of the energy we waste if we don't turn the light off. One of my teachers gave me the idea to use 'glow in the dark ink' so there is an interaction in the illustration when you turn the light on and off. Which one works best? Or do you think it will not work at all? What would you improve? Feedback very welcome!!