I’ve been throwing in the odd post to the recently launched REculture blog which explores the informal post-consumption economies of repair, repurpose, recycling and reuse at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP).
“Recycling has an entirely different meaning in the informal economy at the base of the social and economic pyramid across the developing world. Repair, reuse, repurpose and resale of products and packaging forms the basis of numerous small time businesses and services, creating a REculture that sees the potential for innovation and creativity where we might see waste.” – Niti Bhan
The REculture blog was launched by the globally prolific Niti Bhan of Emerging Futures Lab – a multidisciplinary research and consulting team focused on understanding the people at the base of the pyramid in order to improve the success rate of new ventures, products and services across the developing world.
A snippet on REculture from my end:
Advertising Ahmedabadi-style
A Ravivar Bazaar (Sunday Market) is held weekly on the edge of the Sabarmati River which runs through Ahmedabad. Noteworthy is the large tool trader stall which offers re-circulated goods for second-generation consumption. A micro-enterprise that fuels others to repair, reuse, repurpose and recycle.
The stall’s innovation is that by displaying it’s vast array of goods below the busy Ellis Bridge, it acts as a giant self-promoting ground-level billboard for itself. While corporates pay top dollar for hoarding space above street level – BoP entrepreneurs leverage opportune visibility below.
Keep an eye on REculture to shine a light on scarcity being as much of a driver of innovation as the numerous examples we see of abundance being the accelerator elsewhere.
Sitting firmly at my favoured intersection of communication, culture & creativity are two exemplary projects by UK-based designer/animator/mutlimedia artist: Alan Warburton. Both explore food as an illustrative and participatory medium for enhancing dialogue.
The first was his Cutting the Melon/Cortando el Melon project in Venezuela. The concept was inspired by a conversation with a local friend on politics – who chose to illustrate his point by cutting a melon. The resulting project involved four pairs of participants from the Universidad Central de Venezuela who were asked to cut a melon to depict and discuss aspects of Venezuela’s political situation. Photography & video from the event were later exhibited – prompting viewers to reflect on their own narratives of the political context.
The second project, Fruits of Conversation, was held in the British city of Cambridge. It took the form of a community focused initiative where participants sliced, severed and sculpted locally grown apples to explore topics which they felt define their city. Issues raised covered traffic congestion, cultural integration, planning and development.
“Using apples is very much a leveller. It slows down discussions and makes people a lot more thoughtful and less combative, so when they need to make a point it facilitates a kind of levelled discussion. The first cut is always the hardest. They don’t want to cut the apple because they have to make an assertion. But once they’ve done that they throw caution to the wind.” – Alan Warburton, via the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts
Providing fabulous encouragement for playing with one’s food…
Related post:
Still Life, Smooth Moves
Cultural Confectionery
Last week I became a contributing blogger over at Osocio – a website that aggregates
non-profit campaigns and social advertising from around the globe. Here’s a relevant bit
of cross-posting on a surprisingly simple yet highly effecive design strategy that playfully encourages behaviour change:
Scooping up a D&AD Yellow Pencil in this months awards is the brilliant Newspaper
to New Paper project from Dentsu, Tokyo. I feel D&AD are also to be applauded in acknowledging the great worth of this humble project. It signals that they are gauging quality not so much by the effort that is put into a design but more by the effect it has
on its audience.
Entry Rationale
BRIEF:
Design a package for a street vendor that sells farm-grown vegetables and fruits. The brief required somethig original, easy to use and low cost.
SOLUTION:
We focused on old newspaper used to wrap vegetables with. Newpaper was used for good reasons – for its moisture retention quality which helps keep vegetables fresh longer and for its reuse value. Under the “Newspaper for New Paper” project we utilised what was already there – the newspapers – and added an element of design that would be playful and make people smile… both those selling the vegetables and those buying them. By re-using old papers that would be thrown away, the project was friendly to the environment as well as to the budget. By simply adding colourful dots or stripes to the old paper we came up with a totally new package design.
RESULT:
Sales grew by 20%, as did the number of customers. There was more interaction with customers. Because they liked the design, people didn’t just throw away our New Paper but re-used it for something else. News of the low-cost, original design wrapping paper spread virally to other stores that used newspaper for wrapping. The New Paper project was not just a new design for wrapping paper but a pointer to a better lifestyle for us all.
Related posts:
High Flying Waste
Scarcity Sustaining
Earlier this year I spoke at the TypeShed 11 symposium here in Wellington, New Zealand which was a great opportunity to catch up with global type-obsessives I already knew and to meet some new ones. Though I always feel a bit out on a limb in such company as I’m no craftsperson when it comes to typography (having a short attention span for form) – but rather like to poke around the socio-cultural manifestations, functions and implications of type and type-making.
I spoke on Indian street graphics, touching on issues such as multiple language, globalised brands and competing technologies alongside the pervasive flamboyance of idiomatic typography in India.
You can download a summary of the presentation entitled Sign-wallahs: Indian Streetscape (2MB) that was published last year by the good folk at Lab Magazine or check some of my Indian street graphics collection on Flickr.
Related articles:
Viva Vernacular
Digitising Indian Ink
