Project Open

projectOPEN was conceived in 2005 to assist homeless populations in various communities throughout the US by providing a guide to meet four objectives:
The guide includes a list and map of organizations who specialize in services for the homeless.
The guide helps to locate services available to all citizens within a city that homeless people can utilize for free.
The guide includes a section on both personal rights and laws to encourage social education and to encourage people to follow the law.
The guide is portable and can be displayed as a poster to raise awareness about homelessness.

Austin Center for Design Website

A wicked problem is a form of social or cultural problem that is difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements. These problems are typically offloaded to policy makers, or are written off as being too cumbursome to bother with. Yet these are the problems that plague our world and our cities - poverty, sustainability, equality and health and wellness are issues that touch each and every one of us.

These problems can be mitigated through the process of design - through an intellectual approach to design that emphasizes empathy, abductive reasoning, and rapid prototyping. These are the problems that are addressed at the Austin Center for Design.

Learn more about wicked problems 

http://www.austincenterfordesign.com/faculty.php

PROJECT

Austin Center for Design

In Austin, Texas, a school is launched to help designers build economically 

viable careers working for social betterment.

By Kaomi Goetz 

t’s a design school at least 15 years in the making, an idea that simmered in the 

back of Jon Kolko’s brain. The interactive designer (an associate creative director 

at Frog Design in Austin, Texas) and one-time Savannah College of Art and Design 

instructor had long wanted to create an environment that could help designers find 

more meaning in their careers. It was a concern of many of Kolko’s former 

students, who were working at what were considered dream jobs, places like

Nike and Starbucks. 

“They’re doing the things that everyone was led to believe one does in design 

school, and now they’re questioning it,” he says. “They feel that they’re adding 

to the consumptive nature of the world.”

http://changeobserver.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=13388

Rick Valicenti

Call to Action / A Moving Design Workshop Rick Valicenti, of Moving Design invites passionate, fearless, and brilliant designers to join forces inside the Archeworks Studio. Come together to advance powerful ideas in response to the glocalissues underscored in Archeworks’ Infrastructures for Change Conference. During 11 summer-evening sessions over 6 weeks you will convert design into a tangible and real social currency.

OA Bumper

Hey guys,

Here's a bumper for Old Arizona. The look is supposed to be kind of DIY/GIRL POWER. I was wondering if the text is clearly readable? I know the type looks kind of stretched and wonky, but we'll fix it for sure. We just need a couple of extra set of eyes to make sure things are legible.

Tactile Mind

Photographer Lisa J. Murphy has found a way to make porn truly touching with her bizarre Braille versions of nude images.

Thursday, April 15, 2010 17:21 GMT

TORONTO (Wireless Flash - FlashNews) – Porn has never been so touching – especially now that there’s a Braille version for the blind.

Photographer Lisa J. Murphy has just created Tactile Mind, a book of nude images sculpted on thermoform plastic pages – the same material used in Braille paper.

All the lines, ridges, and crevices of the body parts are touchable, so the pictures can be enjoyed by the visually impaired. To fully feel the erotica, they each come with an accompanying description in Braille.

Murphy, who’s a volunteer at the Canadian National Institute For The Blind, calls the book a “labor of love.”

Each sexy image took her about 50 hours to sculpt so it would be interpreted accurately by the sightless.

Her tactile creations include a woman’s naked breasts, an uncircumcised penis and testicles, and a shaved vagina.

None of her art seems to be getting lost in translation because in her words, “Blind folks say my work is good. Wink, wink.”

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