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Gary Anderson (right): creator of the recycling symbol
1970

Anderson was a 23-year-old USC Architecture graduate when he entered the Container Corporation of America’s design contest to create what would become the universal symbol for recycling. From Wikipedia: The 500 entries to the competition were judged by designers recognized as world leaders in graphics and industrial art, including Saul Bass, Herbert Bayer, James Miho, Herbert Pinzke and Eliot Noyes. According to Anderson: “Angela Davis had just shot up the courthouse and the Manson murders had just happened. I wanted to move away from that, from the Haight-Ashbury poster art with its amorphous organic shapes to create something simpler and cleaner.”

via waxinandmilkin.

Jason de Caires Taylor

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this is the last sentence of project h design’s mission, and it is a statement many of us, as creatives, have declared at some point of our lives {often in the same breath as “one day i will design my own font”}. project h is a non-profit organization based in the bay area that “connects the power of design to the people who need it most” and all that good stuff, including adaptive eyecare glasses and the HippoRoller. one can’t help but be inspired, especially when you share a common process + passion.

but a thought provoking article by bruce nussbaum asks, “is humanitarian design the new imperialism”? even more so, “does our desire to help do more harm than good?”

So where are we with humanitarian design? I know almost all of my Gen Y students want to do it because their value system is into doing good globally. Young designers in consultancies and corporations want to do humanitarian design for the same reason.

But should we take a moment now that the movement is gathering speed to ask whether or not American and European designers are collaborating with the right partners, learning from the best local people, and being as sensitive as they might to the colonial legacies of the countries they want to do good in. Do designers need to better see themselves through the eyes of the local professional and business classes who believe their countries are rising as the U.S. and Europe fall and wonder who, in the end, has the right answers? Might Indian, Brazilian and African designers have important design lessons to teach Western designers?

And finally, one last question: why are we only doing humanitarian design in Asia and Africa and not Native American reservations or rural areas, where standards of education, water and health match the very worst overseas?

his musings about technological colonialism are interesting and nussbaum has made a similar inquiry in the past, “is ‘green’ the ‘new imperialism’?” and this is where we catch ourselves being defensive and paralyzed at the same time. he makes a compelling argument so much so that we hesitate a moment and check our intentions, making sure our feet are still planted in the ground with enough forward momentum. we think about jiu jitsu. we ask ourselves, am i an imperialist? we wonder about that font that we still would like to design, one day. and in the meantime, the founder of project h, emily pilloton, responds to mr. nussbaum.

if the bp oil disaster happened in the bay.

www.ifitwasmyhome.com

There is absolutely nothing funny about the oil mess BP (and some would argue all of us who depend on oil) has created.

except this.

BP spills coffee