design can, you can.
What I like most about working with sustainability is getting in touch with inspiring initiatives, actions and projects where people put their creativity and passion to mobilize their community to support a cause.
Ultimately, we are striving to evolve as a society and minimize what we already perceive in our time as a gap to ensure a more equal and better world for all.
DESIGN CAN is a good example of this effort.
Launched in 2019 in England, the campaign wants, through a platform for engagement and diffusion, to narrow the representativity gap in the design area. A movement to promote diversity in this sector, as they feature on Instagram:
A new campaign and tool calling for an inclusive design industry
@_designcan__ (Instagram)
We are talking about an industry that, whether in product design, graphics, interiors and its various other areas of activity, the focus is to improve the user’s life thinking about usability, comfort, safety, convenience. And with the person at the center of the strategy, it is necessary to be inclusive.
Design Can: be more representative of the world it serves.
Manifesto Design Can
During the process of creating a product, the voices to be heard, whether in the creative team or in customer labs, must be diverse so that the final delivery does not reinforce stereotypes or exclusionary biases.
But it seems that around the world we are still far from achieving this greater representativeness.
In the US, AIGA, a professional design association, has a similar platform: the AIGA Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. In 2016, the AIGA / Google Design Census revealed that 73% of US graphic designers were white, 8% Asian, 7% Hispanic, and 3% African American. A discrepancy regarding the representativeness of these different ethnics communities in the composition of American society (U.S. 2016 Census: 17% Hispanic, 13% African American and 5% Asian).
Design Can
Here in Brazil, in the area of publicity and advertising there is a discussion of representativeness in design teams.
A survey by Meio e Mensagem magazine surveyed the profile of women in the creative areas of advertising agencies. In 2015, less than 20% of the teams were women. In January 2019, that number rose to 26 percent, among vice presidents, creative directors, copywriters, and art directors. An increase, no doubt, but not the necessary breakthrough.
This gender issue is an important aspect when we talk about representativeness. I recently read the book “The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World” by Melinda Gates. Most of the book’s content is related to how the inclusion of women is beneficial to any social system. It has beautiful and exciting stories of Melinda’s experience in social actions at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation around the world, and I recommend reading it.
At one point she makes reference to an academic study done in 2010:
“It found that the collective intelligence of a workgroup is related to three factors: the average social sensitivity of its members, the ability to take in turns collaboratively, and the proportion of women.”
The Moment to lift – melinda gates
Design may be inclusive of ethnic groups, gender and other minority groups, but it can be even more so.
You can read here the Manifesto.
You Can
The DesignCan campaign is also to individual change. Here is the call to action: You can!
1 Recognise your privilege
2 Educate yourself
3 Become an ally
4 Drive recognition
5 Use your influence
6 Refuse one-dimensionality
7 Stand aside
8 Share and submit (campain’s contents)
9 Mentor the next generation
10 Recruit more diversily
A Two Way Conversation
You and everyone can also submit content to inspire change.
That was the part of the campaign I liked the most. You have excellent articles on diversity and inclusion in the link https://design-can.com/resources
Tip: Enter the link when you have time to get lost reading a bunch of cool references on the topic of diversity and inclusion.
I’m doing an immersoin here and hope this post and the Design Can contents can also inspire you!!
Imagens credit: https://design-can.com/ and @_designcan__
* English is not my native language. If you find opportunities of improvement in any part of the text, let me know. In the other hand, if you couldn’t understand other parts cause of a bad translation, also let me know. Thanks a lot!!!!
