VISUAL ADVOCACY — Points of Interests + Possiblities

ISSUES & POINTS OF INTEREST:

problems

• Rising Percentage in Childhood Obesity
• Lack of safe/updated playgrounds
• No official Parks & Rec department
• Poor Roads
• Lack of Sidewalks

solutions

•  Healthy Kids Initiative
  [specifically in gardens and after-school programs like soccer]
• Bring awareness to P&R and push for support
• advocate for safe playgrounds
• bike collective
  [build one, earn one]

POSSIBLE CONTACTS:

Wendy Wilson - Co-director for Rosedale Healthy Kids Initiative
Heidi Holiday -  Program Manager for Healthy Kids Initiative
Erin Stryka - Healthy Kids Club director
Sue Hughes- Chair, Garden Club
Zach Davies- Middle school PE teacher  

Mary Welsh - Principal, Frank Rushton Elementary
James Poplau - Principal, Noble Prentis
Nanette Coleman - Principal, Rosedale Middle School
James Poplau - Principal, Noble Prentis
Zach Davies - Rosedale, Middle PE teacher

#FRESH CUT

I've decided to brand a hypothetical barbershop that is of personal entrepreneurial interest. Why? A barbershop is more than just a place to get your hair cut. The best shops or should I say the most memorable, are the ones that have an enjoyable experience that frame the actual cut. Combining old school values and contemporary aesthetics, I want to create a shop that appeals to men and women that embrace a lifestyle of Quality & Style.

VA discussions week 2

Dissent
—In regards to differing opinions:
If it is true that people easily ignore what they are used to, can a message be manifested in such an unconventional way that people then reject it? Must designers strike a balance? Should we gamble on new paradigms or play it safe with contemporary conventions that allow for easy consumption in hopes that people respond positively to the message.

Propaganda and Protest Graphics
— within graphic design history, the most powerful messages come from eras filled with crisis and controversy. Is it appropriate for us, as graphic designers, to hyperbolize our stance on a subject in order to make the message resonate? Does merely providing information void of a strong emotional stance get the job done?

 

The Black Panther - an informative source

—Can a campaign that pushes for change, have as much impact with a passive community as it can with an active one? Essentially, is a campaign with a powerful activists, such as the black panthers, more successful?

SENSE of COMMUNITY

McMillan & Chavis' Psychological Sense of Community consists of four parts: Membership, Influence, Integration & fulfillment, and Emotional Connection. For me, the last component is the most important of the four. It is perhaps what makes community a "community." It is what makes people want to continue membership, influence others, and fulfill personal and group needs.


Little League— Possibly the first Sense of Community I can remember.

Athletic teams have incredible psychological senses of community. I was put in city league sports at a young age by my parents. For us kids, it was at the time, very much based on emotional connection. This is where most of my friends came from. We wanted to play sports, and our parents wanted something for us to do outside of school, so the most obvious thing to do was to sign up for a team. It aligns closely to McMillan's example of the rec team having a sense of community. What made little league memorable was the time spent together with the families. It was more than my teammates and I relating on a loss or win. It was Just by us playing on the same team created this sense of belonging for us kids as well as our parents. We had common goals and interests that made us proud to be a part of the team. There were a lot of "firsts" in those years that made us relate and bond with one another.  Blood (minimal amounts), sweat, and tears, right? 

MX- The Beginning

Its easy to laugh at this video but it is interesting that in our culture we are starting to rely so much on user generated content. Contribution to the internet in any subject, no matter how frivolous it may be, we are concerned with learning from each other and teaching one another. The theory of multiple intelligence has been of interest to me recently as ive been listening to lectures on lateral thinking and new modes of solving problems. Being aware of the fact that slower doesn't necessarily mean less intelligent is something that will and is shifting the way teachers interact with their students. If we foster this thinking, some serious problem solvers will emerge from the next generation. Ken Robinson poses the grand question of, how do we educate for the future based on the past? What we collectively have decided over time, as to be the steps to success, are not necessarily true anymore. Things are changing rapidly and education must learn to flex with the times. GoodMagazine has a series of videos called future learning that I have been following for a while. Its amazing what groups can do. Ken says something like, " we used to call it cheating, and now its called collaboration"
Mitra's experiments boil down to collaboration being key to the future of learning. There is a vast bucket of information that anyone can tap into. This has changed the role of teacher and student. The one to one model is out. Problems will be solved in groups, not by one single genius.

VML Internship Project

G LockerRoom Deck Large 080612 Universal

This summer I interned at VML. I worked closely with the Gatorade alignment team on various projects that leaped across multiple digital and social platforms. The above work was produced with a team of 7 interns; Some account management, some Project Management, some media experts, some channel gurus, and of course a few designers. Gatorade asked us to create a mobile experience tailored for their key audience of high school athletes that would push the importance of Sports Nutrition. After weeks of brainstorming, debate, and planning we landed on the idea of the locker room. The locker room is a space that every athlete is familiar with. The emotional ties to the space could manifest in a digital space. Going off of a pinterest model, we created "The Locker Room - fueled by G," an app that hosts content from athletic teams. The idea is that by creating a space for athletes to post what they are interested in (training videos, personal athletic feats, inspiration, etc) it would be easier for Gatorade to feed them information about sports nutrition. In addition to athlete generated content, the app would gain importance by allowing conversation between coaches and students. Coaches can post whatever they please just as the athletes can. Suggested content would be game film, reminders, inspiration, and updates. This starts to strengthen the analogy of a digital locker room. The locker room is space that you interact with your team mates, your coaches, and your trainers. We broke the platform up into three general spaces. 1- profile- hosts the content that the user uploads and stats aggregated from highschoolsports.com and maxpreps.com (two sites that hold information on HS athletes, schedules, and rankings). 2- Locker Room- this space aggregates content from each user that that subscribes to the particular Locker Room into a large scrolling feed. Using rosters from maxpreps, athletes would be assigned to the locker rooms for the teams they are a part of. Coaches content and GSSI content would live in this space too. 3- the coaches page- this allows athletes to go directly to their coach profile as a source for updates and important information.
    We were given the awesome opportunity to pitch this to our client, Gatorade, at the end of our internship. The pitch was well received. I cannot say for sure, but implimentation of our ideas are hoped to be evident in the near future.

Kids Jazzoo Collateral

VML gave me the awesome opportunity to help out with Jazzoo collateral and to create the Kid's Jazzoo collateral under the supervision of Allison Radke. Creative director Nick Allegri and GCD Tony Snethen