Tuesday, November 3, 2009

VA | Design Ignites Change | Freewall

my case study for Design Ignites Change is titled 'Freewall.'

This project is about creating equality among diverse high school students by inviting them to participate in a dialogue about all things worthy of love.


I have designed two main pieces to facilitate this dialogue: a message banner and message stickers.


The message banner is 5x5 feet and looks something like a quilt made of cool-colored triangles.


The messages are triangle-shaped stickers that say “I love” and come in a variety of solid, warm colors.


Students are free to write whatever they love on a sticker and place it on the banner. The messages transform the banner from cool to warm, resulting in an all-inclusive community creation.

2 comments:

thenewprogramme said...

hey logan. your project description needs to be more about the big-picture problem/solution than about the details of your solution. the first sentence mentions creating equality and having dialogue, which is good, but i'd expand on that more if you can. is it only about creating equality? in the past, you have mentioned unity, understanding, community, etc as things you are trying to achieve, all as a way to combat bullying or adversarial behaviors in school.

so expand that a bit, while omitting some of the details such as banner size.

finally, do you think "freewall" is descriptive enough of a title? it's pretty intriguing, but is that enough to get someone to click on your project title to read more? i'm not sure exactly, but wanted you to ponder it a bit.

Justin Blake Barnett said...

you da man: I know there has been some concern about kids writing obscene things on the "I Love" stickers and children having a problem with teachers trying to prevent it by censoring. I don't think the kids would have a problem with someone censoring out meanness and bad language because that way the kids would know everything on the poster is really from the heart. You could put a box below the poster where the students could put all the "I love" triangles. Then at the end of the day a teacher could read through them and stick them up on the poster... The only problem i still see is, what's to prevent them from sticking them on the poster themselves, even with the box below... One idea is to put the poster out of reach of the kids, whether that means behind glass, in the office or up high. Another idea is you could make the poster sticky instead of the triangles. If you did something like that it would help the kids not to feel like they were turning in the "i love" cards for censoring because they wouldn't be able to stick them up themselves. I like this idea of not putting on your own triangle because it will force the kids to see other people's messages as they search for their own.