Designers Go 24 Hours for a Good Cause

At the Mediastudios building on Broad Street in Falls Church the lights were on all night as 15 designers worked late into the evening as part of the national Create-A-Thon to donate graphics design services to non-profit groups and organizations over a 24 hour period.

The concept of the event was developed in 1998 when the design firm RIGGS, based in Columbia South Carolina floated the idea of spending 24 hours doing pro bono design work. The idea caught on and three years later the first CreateAThon was born. Each subsequent year the participation has grown and in 2004, the third CreateAThon, 27 groups took part from South Carolina to Vancouver.

Catherine Shaw, president of Mediastudios spent the past three months making preparations to the project, first in soliciting applications from needy charities and non-profits and then working to facilitate contacts and information exchange to make the 24 hour design marathon go more smoothly.

In accordance with the rules of the CreateAThon, Mediastudios is the only participating design firm in the Washington metropolitan area and received over 70 applications by groups looking for design assistance.

Out of those 70 the Mediastudios selected 14 organizations based on the CreateAThon’s recommended criteria, (???). The design firm then stayed in touch with the organization, getting background information, project needs, and timetables. Then on Friday October 1, the groups met at the firm to begin the massive 24 hour design project.

For Shaw the day came as a relief. At 1:00 p.m. on Friday, five hours into the event, the studio was buzzing. Designers sat in front of computers, pored over color palettes, or discussed ideas with each other. Still early the energy was high, though the carafes of coffee donated by the Starbucks down the street were already emptied once. With everyone else in full work mode, Shaw could finally relax a little after almost a month of intense work.

The process began at 8:00 a.m. with an intense intake session where the designers sat down with members of each non-profit to hash out ideas. The conversation ranged from color preferences to the overall mission of the group. During this time the groundwork was set for the day ahead.

Each client was paired with a designer who worked personally on their project and during the discussion the designer compiled notes on the client’s ideas and looed at what the client is presently using as far as visual presentation.

Because of the short time frame the method is different than a normal design project. Usually for a design campaign a single designer will take the lead but every designer will be involved in the creative process. The office is designed specifically for this kind of work. The workroom, rather than separated into cubicles is laid out around a 6.5 by 19 foot table with half a dozen computers.

“It’s my Italian kitchen approach to design,” said Shaw. She described how ideas will fly around the table as designers juggle visual and practical design concepts and share ideas with the rest of the group to get reactions.

While the marathon format means that more people have to work on their own, that doesn’t negate the team aspect of the creation process. Walking around the room the entire time was Matt Langley the founder of the studios. Also a designer, Langley didn’t work on one project during the event. Instead he went from station to station, troubleshooting and sharing opinions. As it got later designers began to work with each other making revisions and recommendations.

By midnight the projects were in full production as designers finished up their concepts and enacted them in the requested medium, whether a poster, pamphlet or website.

Although the completion deadline was scheduled by 8:00 a.m. they hadn’t completed all the projects until noon on Saturday because of some final revisions to the products.

Although hard pressed to get everything done in time, Shaw said that the designs were very successful. Rather than getting in the way of creativity the intensity of 28 hours of work actually created more productivity.

She described the process as a charette, an intense effort to solve an architectural problem within a limited period of time. The term comes from the wagons that Roman architects would use when they would rush their designs to their clients.

In a rushed design process artists are forced to use every resource at their disposal and quickly evaluate and either use or discard ideas quickly. The intense environment has the potential to create explosive breakthroughs in short periods of time.

One of the designers, Nicole Pommerenke talked with the News-Press early in the afternoon on Friday. Working on two separate projects Pommerenke talked about some of the challenges of designing in such a short period of time.

One of her projects, the Eastern High School Choir, a renowned choir program in Washington, D.C., requires her not only to put together a design scheme but also a new logo, one of the most difficult things to do in design despite their small size.

“It’s trying to encompass everything that a group stands for into one tiny thing,” she said.

She said that ideas don’t suddenly coalesce into a design, instead it requires constant tinkering and testing to get an image just right. When designing she said that she will often start by simply making a list of word associations. From the top of her mind she will write down every word that she can think of that might connect to the needs of her client.

At the same time she sketches freehand various ideas. She said that these first sketches are often meant to clear out obvious and trite ideas to make way for more interesting designs later. “It’s a weeding out process,” she said.

Then she creates a palette of colors to choose from. In the case of the High School she knew that they had certain school colors and that they wanted to be portrayed as active and exciting. To depict this she used variations on those colors, complementary tones, and even some surprising contrasts.

As she works she also keeps an ear open to the feedback of the client with whom she stays in constant communication. Normally she would have a series of meetings with the clients to discuss the various design and color options.

In the short 24 hours that she had to make the design she had to rely on email communication and phone conversations with a representative of the client who stayed up all night to be available for consultation.

One of those people was ??? (position) of Asian Pacific Island American (APIA) Vote, a non-partisan organization whose goal is to increase the civic participation among Asian and Pacific Islander American youth. (Talk to her)