Lara McCormick
NEW YORK NY
Lara McCormick is a designer in New York City as well as a teacher. She offers Citizen Designer, a
continuing education course at the School of Visual Arts, because: “As a designer, I have reached
a point where I’m able to selectively work on projects I believe in. I wanted to base a
course on this idea, where students work on assignments that have to do with things they care
about. Borrowing the title from Steven Heller’s book ‘Citizen Designer’
(with his approval), the course focuses on the importance of being a responsible designer.”
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For the final project in McCormick’s
course, students applied for an ‘Ideas
that Matter’ grant from Sappi.
Team “CitizenD” consisted of
Viviana Briseño, Liu Chiawei and
Libby Clarke.
On the first day of the course, the
students all wrote a list of things that
are important to them. Something that everyone
agreed on was green design. Libby Clarke was
familiar with Build It Green! NYC, a non-profit
retail outlet for salvaged and surplus building
materials, and made the introduction. BIG!
NYC’s mission is to keep materials out
of the landfill, while offering deep discounts
on their resale. All proceeds support
environmental education programs, lectures and
arts events throughout the year. Thus, the
client understood the importance of sustainable
design. The design team discussed what type of
materials could be used to print on so that
items like signage could last and have multiple
uses. The signs they created were silkscreened
onto wood and, while posted in the warehouse,
could also be easily transported for use at
expos and green markets. Canvas bags were also
designed to carry the BIG!NYC logo; they used
bags that had been misprinted, salvaged and
turned inside-out. Concludes McCormick:
“The client did not have the manpower to
give us consistent feedback. We had to be
proactive and decisive. At the end of the project,
we sent the client PDF’s of all our
design explorations, and a basic style guide.
We made ourselves available as consultants for
now and the future. The client recognized the
need to have a graphics person inhouse and got
the budget to do this.”
What did the students take away from the projects?
Liu Chiawei: “I learned how to apply
for a grant, pitch ideas to non-designers and
exchange ideas with non-profits. This project
demystified the process of grant application.
If this Sappi grant exists, there are others
out there for non-profits that I can apply
for.”
Viviana Briseño: “At first I thought, “Let’s make some sexy design,
it’s free for them.” I thought
it would be a vanity project. It ended up
being very practical, in-the-trenches reality.
It’s not about producing an extravagant
portfolio piece but about being of service.”
Libby Clark: “I feel more empowered to
reach out to local resources for printing versus
going to larger suppliers. Working with a local silkscreener and printer, there was a more
personal level of involvement.”
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