Our project began precisely by noticing the differences among icons already in existence. As we’ve said from the beginning, the icon has been informally redesigned many times. But the graphic is actually a very small fraction of the work. We get a lot of questions about the features of the icon itself and why ours is “better” than any other. It’s easy to look at our icon and assume that it’s a graphic design project.
Why do you think of this project as activism? We’re inspired by design activism like ACTUP, Kissing Doesn’t Kill, or any number of historical street art political campaigns. The point of these artifacts is contestation, not a tidy fix.
About us icon graphic website series#
Instead of solving problems in the manner of industrial design, or organizing forms as in graphic design, activist design creates a series of questions or proposals using artifacts or media for unresolved ends: to provoke, or question, or experiment in search of new political conditions.
About us icon graphic website professional#
We partnered with Tim Ferguson Sauder, a professional graphic designer, to bring our icon in line with professional standards.ĭesign activism uses the language of design to create political debate. So the project grew from guerilla activism to a social design project: The Accessible Icon Project. Those newfound collaborators have also told us that they wanted a new formal icon to replace the old ones, not just a street art design. Making those connections has outpaced our expectations for this work by a hundredfold. Since 2011, we’ve gotten some press coverage for the work, and that coverage has brought us into conversation with people all over the world who are advocating for disability rights in many forms, in quite different contexts from the city of Boston. Who has access-physically, yes, but moreover, to education, to meaningful citizenship, to political rights? Framing this work as a street art campaign allowed it to live as a question, rather than a resolved proposition. Instead, we wanted this icon-action to be the occasion for asking questions about disability and the built environment, in the largest sense.
And we knew that better icons already existed. We knew that editing the old signs as graffiti would pose questions more provocatively than a “better” icon, rendered professionally. Applying these stickers around Boston started as a street art campaign-nothing more or less.
0 kommentar(er)
