Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

This paper focuses on a collaborative, multi-disciplinary, and team-based graphic design partnership between the two state institutions, and the community of Perry, IA. Students and faculty immersed themselves in the community for five days where we ate at local restaurants and used these opportunities to process what we had learned that day and to also invite community leaders. The paper highlights how utilizing graphic design resources and methods to engage the community to identify areas for improvement and problem solve around specific economic and health challenges that are important to the community. The paper also demonstrates how the Moonshot Theory and embracing ideas around the Peer-to Peer economy as it relates to Micro-Lending were essential in allowing the students to engage with the community and produce real and immediate design interventions. Students would respond to a specific community need, which would be placed in that community, and then the community would respond. Students would then strengthen or change the intervention and have it back in the community on the same day. This meant that student teams were producing two interventions a day and with each reintroduction the scale and scope of the projects grew. In five days a total of thirteen community projects were realized and the community was celebrated as we hosted a final exhibition and thank you party.