80 Works for Designers

Challenge: Lost in Translation

This is a fun challenge that I've used a few times in class, and it should only take you about 30 minutes!

The above example, a retooling of an ad for avoiding infant formula, was turned into an ad for Woodland Park Zoo by Donnie Dinch... which shows how you can do this exercise with a straight face or have some fun with it.

Lost in Translation

Your ad reads: “Lorem ispsum consequat dolor ix vox populii.” Either your audience is fluent in designer’s Latin, or you need to roll up your sleeves and start writing some real headlines. Crafting copy for a design project can be fun if you have a strong command of your native tongue—though if writing is not your forte, the process can be nerve-wracking.

But don’t be scared. You’ve probably been copywriter at one point in your life. Just think back to when you took a trip to a foreign land. When confronted by cryptic billboards and bewildering ad images, you couldn’t help but write sales copy on the fly. How else could you process that otherwise unintelligible mass of foreign characters atop a smiling, bikini-clad woman clutching a piping-hot cappuccino?

Use the following challenge to take a journey into the mind of a copywriter. Find a foreign-language advertisement that you admire, then redesign it with text you’ve written in your native tongue. If possible, do not adjust the layout to fit your words. What will help this foreign ad make sense in your cultural context?

If you'd like to take it further: Find a television advertisement in a foreign language, take screen captures from key scenes that incorporate written text, and retouch them with dialogue in your language that makes sense of the progression of images.

Included after the break is another example from a set of images that I provided in this post from this past January.

Challenge: Charitable Status Update

See if you can solve this challenge in two hours, with a tight sketch of your solution...

Charitable Status Update

One of the wonders of the Internet is as follows: our newfound ability to connect like-minded individuals in support of nonprofit initiatives that need immediate assistance.

While online campaigns will never completely supplant the silent auctions and fundraising breakfasts of the world—which are conducted to finesse the high-rollers for big-ticket donations—social communities can mobilize swiftly and effectively to create an impact on both a local and a national scale. And within those communities, we can use our design skill and technological savvy to create new kinds of cause-fostering opportunities that have never existed before.

In this challenge, consider the possibilities that exist for nonprofits to raise funds and support within an enclosed social network.

Come up with ideas for a Facebook application that will help raise $200k for a nonprofit cancer-fighting foundation.

Should it be a game? A pass-along greeting? Bracing factoids that induce guilt? A charity auction? Clearly think through how people will need to move from their first interaction to donating money, what elements of the application you’d need to design in order to sell in your recommendation, and how your installation and use of the application will potentially be shared on your friends’ news feeds. What will you create that transcends the ways that we currently use Facebook?

“Every good act is charity. A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good that he does in the world to his fellows.” —Moliere

If you'd like to take it further: Draw up a press release that you would send to bloggers promoting your Facebook app. Why would people outside the Facebook community want to promote your cause?