The Making the Difference Through Design Resource Guide
Six years after the very successful launch of the Making the Difference Through Design Programme, Woolworths, together with the Western Cape Education Department, Sappi and Design Indaba, has introduced a second Design Resource Guide for high school Design and Visual Arts teachers. The new Design Resource Guide features case studies from some of the world’s best design practices.
Woolworths has played a vital role in developing learning and teaching support materials and offering support in the form of workshops to teachers, through its Making the Difference Through Design Educational Programme since the implementation of Design as a subject in the FET Curriculum in 2006. Like the first Design Resource Guide, a 600+ page file containing over 80 case studies, the aim of the second volume is to enrich the educational process by providing high school teachers with real life case studies from practising designers to help encourage and inspire the high school learners who are the designers of tomorrow.
Says Pieter Twine, who heads up the Woolworths Educational Programmes, “While the first volume has a very South African flavour, this time we wanted to provide a global perspective with case studies from some of best design practices in the world, as well as some South African design projects which have received international recognition. In addition to giving insights into the design project itself, we also asked our contributors to provide insight into the commercial aspect of their projects, as well as the challenges they faced in bringing them to fruition.”
Twine continues, “The commercial aspect of design is an important one in South Africa, and we believe that successful designers, as young creative entrepreneurs, can make a significant difference by creating jobs for many people in the longer term.”
This second volume of the Design Resource Guide will be sent to nearly 400 schools in the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal and covers all four design disciplines which form part of the curriculum:
Visual Communication Design
Surface Design/Two Dimensional Craft Design
Product Design/Three Dimensional Craft Design
Environmental Design
It includes contributions from world-renowned designers including Massimo Vignelli, Michael Bierut and Vince Frost, as well as some South African designers who are making a name for themselves around the world. These include:
Peet Pienaar and Hannerie Visser of the Toffee Pop Culture Festival;
The Handspring Puppet Company – the group who created the puppets for the award-winning stage production of ‘War Horse’ – with the story of a ‘Tall Horse’;
Graffiti artist, Faith47, who took the words of the Freedom Charter to South African streets;
Filmmaker Roger Horrocks, whose documentary about swimming with crocodiles in the Okovango Delta has been shown all over the world;
Animation production company, Shy the Sun, with imaginative 3D animated ads created for M-Net;
INK, with their design of a beaded vine light.
From beyond our borders there’s Massimo Vignelli & Beatriz Cifuentes-Caballero’s new corporate ID for Woolworths, Frost’s creations for Australia’s pavilion at the 11th International Venice Architectural Biennale, Michael Bierut with Pentagram’s solution for reinvigorating New York’s school libraries, an uplifting story from Francis Kéré, a young architect from Burkino Faso, about the design and construction of a village school, Kiran Bir Sethi with the success story of Design for Change from India, the remarkable design for a clock at Heathrow Airport by Troika, and Marc Shillum with the design of an interactive corporate ID.
Concludes Twine, “Over the past six years, thousands of young people have benefited from the Making the Difference Through Design Programme. It has helped some to develop their talent, and others to discover theirs.”
“Even those who have not gone on to pursue careers in design have gained an appreciation of design and creative thinking that will serve them no matter what career they follow.”