Heading to Australia

Sorry the lack of updates this past month, but after summer school ended, I thought it was important to have a little decompression time. That lasted about a week, as I’ve been up to several new projects, the biggest being my trip to Australia. Why Australia you might ask? During my Design Advocacy class this summer, we worked on projects about Maternal Health. The final product was an exhibition called “DESIGN STRATEGIES for NGO’s” a series of 6 case studies/design solutions addressing Maternal Health. It will be on display at the 63rd Annual United Nations DPI/NGO Conference in Meblourne, Australia. I’m planning to expand on my solution further in thesis this year.

Through this class, I was introduced to someone at Fordham University that is working on another exhibition at the Conference. Her group is creating a “student village” of booths, each one addressing one of the eight MDGs (Millennium Development Goals). I was asked to help design an identity for all the booths, and create content for the Maternal Health booth. It ended up being a pretty large undertaking, designing here in the US, coordinating printing in Australia, and preparing all the Pratt projects to be shown.

After doing all this work, Pratt decided to send one student to Australia, and I was lucky enough to be it! At the Conference I will be installing the Pratt exhibition, while serving as their official representative. Additionally, I’m representing the Art Center of College and Design and hanging their show as well. After all these weeks of work, I’m so happy to be given this amazing opportunity. As many of you know, I’ve never traveled abroad, so this will truly be an adventure. I can’t wait to take you along …

Below are some of the projects I helped put together

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Design Solutions

As I’ve been looking for possible solutions for my Design Advocacy class, I came across this article by Matt Cooke that I found particularly useful for creating a process or methodology. In this case study, Matt was to help the World Cancer Research Fund test the effectiveness of their graphics and literature. Their research had also discovered new data linking obesity and the appearance of cancer, and they needed to bring awareness to this issue. Here are Matt’s steps for designing for this problem.

I feel that my poster below is a good first step to bring awareness to this issue, but it needs another component. I would like to create handouts, which could live as a printed piece, and in digital form. NGO’s (non-profits) could use them as handouts, to make the case for Maternal Health. I would love to design something with greater impact, that could be an agent of change on it’s own, but I think the NGO’s are doing amazing work, and my job at this stage in the game, would be to support them, and possibly make my cause for Maternal Health in the U.S.

I really like the following form, these could highlights facts, from some of the reports that I’ve found and some that we’ve discussed in class. I really like this form b/c it’s one page, but can be folded to make a booklet.This is done by Frank Chimero. Check out more of his work here.

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On a more serious note

Poster I submitted for the UN’s Youth Pre-Conference event on June 16th, 2010

STATEMENT:

Daniel Wiggins, Pratt Institute Graduate Communication Design Student

While researching the UN’s Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5, I came across a disturbing Maternal Health fact within my own country. “Black women in the United States are 3-times more likely to die as a result of childbirth than white women,” according to a study. Could this really be true; are there really such large health disparities in the US? Due to many socioeconomic factors, there are huge disparities in health and life expectancy in the US. As an “socially aware” college student, I was shocked I was unaware of these issues. Most of us believe these are Third World problems, and they do not exist in our own neighborhoods. This is simply untrue. The fact is, many health outcomes in the US for specific minority groups (and I’m talking about millions of citizens),
are equal to those in developing nations.

As designers, we are given a unique opportunity to impact the world around us, and it is our responsibility to be aware and informed. I hope this poster, along with further research, will help shed light on the need for better Maternal Health practices in this country. While Maternal Health is truly an global issue, change must start at home.

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