Where will design take you? Google Creative Lab’s Xavier Barrade @ Graphic Days Torino 2019
Graphic Days Torino is officially on. Born in 2016, this four-day international festival dedicated to visual design, which takes place at Toolbox Coworking (Turin, Italy) festival, aims at enhancing the cultural value of visual communication, inspiring people who work with creativity and this year’s fourth edition of Graphic Days Torino is focusing on the combination between visual design and social issues.
“This year our organisation has chosen to deal with the topic 'integration'. We have been involving foreign communities living in our territory or connected to our event in order to realize together some projects on visual communication and cultural identities, enhancing excellence coming from different nations. The result is a multicultural path that crosses the festival through different activities and exhibitions to display the contamination among populations, but also among different perceptions, skills and abilities” notes Graphic Days Torino.
This edition of the festival, based in one of Europe's most polarized countries on the refugees' crisis, premieres today with Pentagram's Astrid Stavro sharing her experiences in the graphic design industry at GDT's opening talk on October, 3.
During the festival Google Creative Lab's Xavier Barrade will share his insights having spent the last years working on creating content for emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Self Driving cars, Virtual & Augmented Reality, and helping to design and evolve Google products.
Barrade is a creative lead currently working at Google Creative Lab in London where he helps to make things that connect people and technology through GCL, his team of interdisciplinary thinkers and doers which features designers, writers, business leaders, filmmakers, animators, producers, creative technologists, and much more.
Barrade’s “small team pushes for an impact that outweighs our footprint” -enter Refugee Info Hub, the mobile site for NGOs to provide refugees with accurate, up-to-date information in partnership with the International Rescue Committee and Mercy Corps.
“Refugee Info Hub mobile site was created in just 36 hours. So far, the site has helped over 600,000 refugees seeking trusted information to continue their journey safely”
“In 2015, up to 7000 refugees were landing on Greek Islands every day. Unfortunately most of the information that was available to them was inaccurate, out of date, or in a language they didn't understand. That’s why the International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, and Google created Refugee Info Hub: a mobile site for NGOs to provide refugees with accurate, up-to-date information” notes Google Creative Lab.
Powered by Google Docs, a tool NGOs are familiar with, making it easy for them to update the vital information on the ground as quickly as possible the mobile site is designed to use as little data and battery power as possible -FYI the white on black design uses up to 40% less battery.
The site was created in just 36 hours, and launched it in Lesvos. Four months later, it was available in 18 additional locations across Europe and being updated by more than 30 NGOs. So far, the site has helped over 600,000 refugees seeking trusted information to continue their journey safely.
“With the evolution of technology, the boundaries of what designers can do are expanding every day, this talk aims to give a small peek into what’s possible. Xavier Barrade who started his career as a graphic designer and is now a Creative Lead at Google Creative Lab will take you through his journey from creating posters and books to helping to invent new technologies, create immersive experiences and design digital products that help millions every day” notes GDT of Barrade's talk “Where will design take you?” this Saturday.
Other notable speakers are Yara Said, the young designer who commissioned to design a flag for the refugee team that went to the Olympics aka the awarded Refugee nation flag who will talk about the artist’s role in contributing to society through social design, République Studio, the award-winning creative direction and graphic design practice based in Paris whose love for typography is the driving force behind its impressive portfolio of works, Spin Studio, High on Type, Tsto, Offshore Studio, Studio Feixen, Eye Magazine’s Simon Esterson and John L. Walters, Dalton Maag South London’s creative director and type designer Riccardo De Franceschi and DesignStudio who will address the many challenges designers are facing in their Saturday Night Talk “Let’s change everything.”
“Graphic Days Torino 2019 deals with 'integration' in order to realize some projects on visual communication and cultural identities, enhancing excellence coming from different nations”
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Slider images caption: “We had the pleasure to completely redesign the '20 Minuten', the most widely read newspaper in Switzerland, as part of a campaign for Samsung” notes Studio Feixen on their collaboration with the agency Jung von Matt for a newspaper that was “ intended more to be looked at, than read. In a first step, we redesigned the entire layout with all its nuances, such as the visuals of the horoscopes, the logos of the television stations, a tragically-odd comic, or an emotional weather map. What’s usually developed in months of hard labor had to happen within a few weeks. Nonetheless, we decided not to leave it as a redesign. On a second layer, each page was confronted with a colourful interpretation of its content. This way, not only the design edition itself became unique, but every single page within” via Studio Feixen
Tags/ inspiration, google, festival, newspaper, redesign, pentagram, social issues, olympics, dalton maag, italy, migrant journal, studio feixen, offshore studio, designstudio, eye magazine, refugees, graphic days torino, google creative lab, international rescue committee, mercy cops, mobile, xavier barrade, astrid stavro, 20 minuten, spin studio, république studio, refugee crisis, yara said, flag
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