the charity water project

"When we started charity; water, the first thing we did was build a well, and take a picture of it. Then we told the story of the lives changed in that community to everyone back home. We've been doing that ever since. We want to show the immense need for clean water, and how that looks, really, not through statistics, but by looking at individual lives it affects. We've found this is our most powerful tool."

The idea for this class project is to look at ways how graphic design can play an active role developing a sustainable future. because we still depend on clients who pay money, graphic design is usually directly connected with the corporate world, pushing more and more products to 10% of the world who already have everything we could possibly want, ignoring the 90% who don't have clean water, housing, education, transport etc.

So what can graphic design do for sustainability? articulate projects, visualize ideas & solutions, present opportunities, connect possibilities, open source networks online, fundraising campaigns. We can tell & show the stories of peoples lives better than anybody else.

So we'll look at charitywater.org as an example of how design can work towards a sustainable world, there are many other examples (see the list on the right) but this is just the pick of the month for kicks. Charity water has a great use of design for their campaign, they tell the stories very well, give 100% of the money to building wells, and they show that fundraising is possible.

After our whole list of possible things to make, we decided to design a postcard /poster campaign, both virtual and stenciled cards, to go viral and ask people to change their xmas present into a donation to charitywater.org for clean drinking water. 

And we'll design chandeliers for the provost or presidents office, or the design office if we can get them to give a nice donation -

and we'll look at all the other examples of design opportunities, because there are a whole lot of stories to tell and projects to be articulated better. there really is a different design career out there if you are interested.