After talking with The Manchester School of Art Art&Design Club about her background and communication design with a focus on sustainability, Sophie Thomas from Thomas.Matthews introduced her brief for the day: “Modern Life is Rubbish.” She asked the Club members to develop starting points for activism and related design projects that could be continued in their classes over the following weeks.
Having come up with lots of issues that concerned them, the young people divided into groups to work on mental health, body image, the environment and transport, thinking about how visual design could be involved in getting their messages across to the public. Finally, they created a hashtag to summarise their projects, which included #iunderstand, and #TurnLitterIntoTrees.
The day finished with a Q&A with Sophie. “I think it was an especially useful experience in helping members to understand how the design process works, and that thinking, writing and talking are
important parts of that process,” said their tutor, Kate Dunstone, who described it as “a really positive day”.