设计师集会在社会变革背后, combatting everything from gun violence to racist banking

In 2014,德赢提款为枪支安全颁发了设计奖, a then-new nonprofit founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to combat gun violence. This was two years after the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and the imperative to build a movement had never been more urgent.

Everytown tapped the design studio目的to develop a powerful branding campaign that used graphics to highlight shocking statistics, such as, “Americans are 20 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in other developed nations,” and “gun trafficking in the U.S. carries the same punishment as trafficking chickens or livestock.” Three months after the rollout, Everytown had added nearly a million new supporters.

Designers have long used their persuasive talents to effect social change. This has often taken the form of communication design: Logos, posters, and other visuals are hallmarks of nearly every major social movement, from LGBT rights to Black Lives Matter. But since德赢提款launched the Innovation by Design Awards 10 years ago, we have seen even more ambitious advocacy efforts. Today, as manybusinesses embrace progressive causes, the fight for social justice crosses design disciplines, from architecture to graphic design and user experience.

有时努力是教育的。Studio Artefact今年因开发一个设计奖而获得了创新platform that teaches kids about bias in AI。体验设计工作室本地项目还获得了多个奖项Greenwood Rising, a museum dedicated to the forgotten history of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Both projects are meant to raise consciousness—or, as Local Projects’ founder Jake Barton puts it, to use “design as a lightning rod” for difficult conversations.

Other projects solve specific problems. Jaden Smith’s nonprofit 501CThree won an Innovation by Design Award in 2019 for theWater Box，一种移动过滤装置，为受火石水危机影响的居民提供数千加仑的清洁水。建筑公司Overland Partners在次年获得了奖项Childsafe圣安东尼奥, a building designed to help heal abused children. And this year, Chase earned accolades for partnering with local organizations, including the LeBron James Family Foundation in Akron, Ohio, tobuild community centersthat battle racism in banking. Though very different projects, they have a common goal: to use design to right historical wrongs.

That applies to the design process itself, which is typically rooted in Eurocentric ideals. “As more designers are transitioning into working on social change—tackling inequities in housing, healthcare, and education—we must acknowledge that systemic racism is the root cause underlying all of these disparities,” says Sara Cantor, cofounder of the socially minded design firm Greater Good Studio, in a特别的德赢提款reporton the most urgent issues facing designers today. “While I don’t believe designers should try to become DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) consultants, we must work to understand and undermine the ways that racism shows up, including at the internalized, interpersonal, organizational, and structural levels.”

See more fromFast Company’s2021 Innovation by Design Awards。Our new book,Fast Company Innovation by Design: Creative Ideas That Transform the Way We Live and Work(Abrams, 2021), is on sale now.