LOCAL PROJECTS
Local Projects designs experiences that create conversations.
hello!
PRO JEC TS
As a media-design rm based in New York, it uses information design, media production, interactivity, and social media to both solicit and tell stories.
PRO JEC TS
As a media-design rm based in New York, it uses information design, media production, interactivity, and social media to both solicit and tell stories.
Sitting in the center of this photograph is the founder and principle if Local Projects, Jake Barton. This project you just watched explains a lot about what they do. The name Local Projects was inspired by a quote from Speaker of the House, Tip ONeill, stating that all politics is local. For Local Projects...
JAK E BAR TON
All design is local.
VIS ION
All design is local.
MEMORY MAPS
Telling stories to strangers is not something that most people seek to do. But nding these stories, encouraging them from people in unlikely scenarios, and making the experience enjoyable, is exactly what Local Projects aims to do.
MEM ORY MAP S
Memory Maps was created for the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival. It was one of Local Projects rst projects.
During this festival they created a structure that looked like a subway car and inside of it they printed large maps of the city where people could write their stories on sheets of vellum and...
MEM ORY MAP S
MEM ORY MAP S
pin them to specic locations.
MEM ORY MAP S
Together it became a new version of the citycreated through memories layered together with each handwritten sheet mixing with the other.
One result of this project that wasnt planned for was the face to face sharing of stories between visitors through interacting with the project.
MEM ORY MAP S
STORY CORPS
Story Corps is a National Oral History Project that explores this exchanging of stories through a means of verbal communication. The idea is simple...
STO RY COR PS
you go into a soundproof booth and conduct a 45 minute interview with a...
STO RY COR PS
loved one or neighbor. When you nish, you leave with a CD of the experience and a another copy goes into the Library of Congress.
Clips from these interviews are then played on the radio weekly. Its power comes from capturing these intimate conversations that are often lled with questions that have never been asked before. Heres one example of the project...
STO RY COR PS
STO RY COR PS
[clip]
ISSUES FORUM
While Local Projects focuses heavily on stories. Theyre also interested in collecting opinions that will create a medium for a dialogue.
The Contemporary Issues Forum created for the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia allows visitors to reect on controversial questions.
ISS UES FOR UM
Visitors can articulate their point of view by writing it out and vote by scanning in their card which will then give them an instant poll on where the community stands. When they place their card on the actual wall it will reveal a sequence of other visitors who have also responded. Through the process they hoped to make these controversial issue more human.
ISS UES FOR UM
PERSONAL OPINION
So lastly, I thought I should end on my own thoughts...
For me, Ive always been interested design for good and usually what comes to mind with these sorts of projects are grassroots, low-tech, and low funded types of projects. But at the same time Im also very interested in interactive design, but a lot of times when you tell people this they immediately put you in this box of websites, and mobile app design, which is not totally not the case for me.
PRO JEC TS
For me, Ive always been interested design for good and usually what comes to mind with these sorts of projects are grassroots, low-tech, and low funded types of projects. But at the same time Im also very interested in interactive design, but a lot of times when you tell people this they immediately put you in this box of websites, and mobile app design, which is not totally not the case for me.
PRO JEC TS
LOCAL PROJECTS
What I like about Local Projects is that really utilizes the affordances of technology, but theyre work denitely goes beyond that, its an experience, its about storytelling and really, Jake Barton says it best...
FIN AL THO UGH TS
