Designing to make a difference

2010

I came aboard at Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Contagion, Judas and the Black Messiah) to design editorial content for their new social consciousness initiative TakePart.com. The site was meant to become a social media/news hub for pressing world issues from climate change to drug cartels. I was given a team of research interns, a couple of designers, a vendor to build out Flash content and the title Art Director to shape these resources into consumable, sharable, interactive content. We started with a list of 100 issues and picked a top dozen (mostly tied to upcoming film releases from the production company) to design into compelling stories.

We built clickable, infographic-style modules around Obesity, the war in the Congo, Cetaceans and other issues by brainstorming around what would make interesting interactive content and then coming up with little worlds we could build. I tried to give each one a sense of space and depth that made it more than just a flat page in a newspaper, but something more like a cinematic experience the parent company was known for.

The project has since gone dark, but Participant Media still carries on its work of producing meaningful entertainment with a purpose. That’s what I liked about working there : the work felt meaningful. So much of what we do as designers is transient or merely commercial. Having real social purpose behind the designs I’m working on I think helps drive better creativity. I guess that’s the passion showing through.

Sorry, the UI seems very dated now. Ten years in digital is a looong time.