SocialDesignZine

SocialDesignZine is an Italian Web log on design and the public interest. The project was started last Spring by the AIAP, the Italian Association for the Design of Visual Communication.

A translation of a statement of purpose by Mario Piazza, AIAP President:

“The need for reflection and listening that is part of the job for those who work in communication design is today of vital importance. And it is for this reason that the AIAP has started this site and program as a new step in its operating policy, which in recent years has attentively investigated the professionalism, and above all, the discipline of this field. These two levels are inseparable if one truly believes in the maturation of this profession.

Our idea is simple: we want to build a series of on-line constellations around the association’s institutional site, which will continue to be the gravitational center of the network. A series of sites which approach pertinent professional topics in a thorough way. Themes which we have already confronted in part, but which can no longer be included our site and the ‘ordinary’ activity of the association. But not only this — these themes need to be looked at in a new light and with all the potential that new technologies offer us.

In our most recent meeting in Riccione we made a first stab at this new approach. Participation in the AIAP Community was very high because it was a sort of meeting place. A place for listening, where ideas flowed and communication was direct and friendly. It was a time for growth for a ‘community’ of designers.

It is along these lines that this new site was born. We have dedicated a fundamental part to the future and to something we have worked on a lot in these past years: the theme of the ethical horizon of the profession. Above all this working site, open to your contributions, will try to understand what the social dimension of communication design is. And so we start by asking a few questions:

Is social design a sustainable project? Is is an ethical project? Is it ecological? Participatory? Political? Or is it something completely different? Our wish is to build together a well thought-out answer. We would like to construct a sort of manifesto, a ‘bill of social design.’

Along these lines we will construct materials, documentation, reflections — a rich and complete database for research, instruction, continuing education. Also for this purpose we are requesting submissions and active participation in order to document projects and experiences which aid in reflection, which communicate the elevated meaning of designing.

But the heart of the project, and the part which we have already put into motion is the construction of testimony and presentations on daily themes, concrete instances, based on news, a life lived, personal research or information to be shared. In other words a place where, with a sense of responsibility and motivated participation on the part of the user, we can dialogue, exchange ideas, listen and grow together, developing a more critical and intense eye which, through these exchanges, will allow us to become responsible designers. Skilled, in quality and intelligence, in confronting professional themes with the knowledge of our own limits and those of the world around us. It is hope in a project, it is our new challenge.”

They’ve just posted an Italian translation of my review of the book Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility.

It’s also intertesting to see more professional associations exploring the issue of ethical practice. I wonder how far it will go.