3/30
I attended the event called “Jakob Trollback: Design for Change; Communicating with 7 Billion People”, which was hosted by Type Directors Club.
We had Jakob Trollback as a speaker, who is CCO and founder of creative studio Trollbäck + Company , former creative director of R/GA and DJ.
He mostly talked about the process of designing visual and verbal communication behind the branding project of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which calls for concerted efforts towards building sustainable and resilient future for people and planet. Their goal is to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and communicate with 169 targets of the new agenda and 7 billion people.
Sustainable Development Goals
Trollback explained how hard it was to find 17 colors that match with each other and the process of designing each icon. Between two photos above, the icons were slightly different. Some of them were the same from the beginning and some of them were revised many times. It was very inspiring to see transformation of the icons. I learned how minor changes affect the overall impression of the icon.
Rules for designing this project
He said that as a designer you should find a real problem for what you design, and think how to solve it. For instance, we don’t want to reduce abortions but we want to reduce unwanted pregnancies. Finding a real problem is a key for good design. Also, if you want to communicate through design, you have to connect people and know people. Where they come from, their background, their struggles..etc.
I surprised at the fact that he never went to design school. He worked as DJ and he got a flyer design job from next store from where he worked at. This was the very first step for his design career. He showed us the first work he did and he says that was horrible, but I thought it was very well done for someone who never studied design.
Though it was not a social networking event, I got to talk to some people while waiting for the event starts. I talked to woman, Natalie, who sit next to me, she recently graduated Persons with Communication Design degree. She said that her Type class professor recommend her to attend this event. We exchanged some information about the projects that we’re working on and I showed her my logo design and got some feedback on it. She recommended the event called “Type Thursday”, which is also hosted by Type Directors Club. It’s a monthly event where you can bring your work in progress project and get feedback from other people. They usually have drinks so you can come in after work and mingle with people.
I also talked to two other people who were coming this event together, Ryan and Patricia. They said that they are working together and came to this event after work. They recently work on the project that is very similar to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So they came there for inspirations.
After event, everyone went straight home and there were not many people. I stayed a bit longer to see the poster exhibition they had that ended the day after the event. Those posters were for National Park and they were mostly typographic design as TDC held the exhibition. Interestingly, they all look very different even though it was for the same clients. The use go color, typography, and layout was really interesting.
