Viz for Social Good with David Whitmore

Creative Brief

Crafted Product

With David Whitmore, the former Design Director at National Geographic Magazine, I worked on a rebrand for Viz for Social Good. These designs were not selected. But I still think they work well for conveying the ideas of collaboration, diversity, and data.

Branding

Logos

vfsg-logo-6.pdf69.9KB

vfsg-logo-4.pdf14.1KB

vfsg-logo-7.pdf70.6KB

Student Projects

🎒VFSG Student projects

Goal

Rebrand Viz for Social Good as it becomes a non-profit organization in 2021.
Logo and wordmark need to be visible on collateral for conferences.

More about Viz for Social Good

Viz for Social Good (VFSG) is about harnessing the power of data for social change. VFSG supports mission-driven organizations that want to realize the potential of their data. These international organizations post creative project briefs to the VFSG platform. Volunteers—either through local chapters that host hackathons or individually online— download the project briefs and data. They analyze and visually communicate the data for goals relevant to the mission-driven organization. These data-driven goals can include transparency in reporting, tracking, and explaining topics through advocacy and awareness. To read more about this, check out this article about how data scientists can give back, by VFSG board member Vanitha Lucas.

Volunteers typically come from data science, analytics, and data visualization backgrounds, but they can include anyone who wants to learn how to work with data in support of good causes. Volunteers have used projects they've created with VFSG as portfolio projects to grow their careers or explore new paths, as seen in this case study with Yoshi, a volunteer from the Tokyo chapter.

VFSG was founded in 2016 by Chloe Tseng, and has since grown to be managed by a coalition of volunteers, which we call the board; each member has a lead they're working on.

I founded the Educational Partnerships for VFSG. Because VFSG is becoming a non-profit this summer and the board members all work full-time, I see an opportunity for students to play a significant role in shaping the organization.

This can include multiple collaborations even beyond data science, analytics, and visualization. VFSG could benefit from these collaborations as well:

social entrepreneurship students working with VFSG to develop its nonprofit plan and implementation
communication students in developing how VFSG pitches and communicates
marketing students who can help with promoting VFSG
digital media and journalism students for social media communications
others?

Role

👋

My role: Art Direction & Education Partner

As the founding Education Partner for Viz for Social Good, I brought the platform into the pedagogical domain. In my Data Visualization course at the State University of New York at New Paltz, graphic design students learned how to read, understand, and make charts, culminating in a Viz for Social Good project at the end of the semester. Students also attended to data ethics and a reliable process. They created data biographies and communicated with prose, tables, and charts.

I'm on the second row, at left.

🔗

Link to → David Whitmore Design, Graphic Designer

Process

Discovery

Observations

👀

Viz for Social Good had no visual identity. We looked at other organizations that have a similar purpose, such as Data Kind.

👂

The team is based in locations around the world, so communication and agreement proved challenging. I presented the ideas through Slack.

🖍️

I reached out to David and together we explored the logo and wordmark. David has an interesting and sophisticated graphic style that works well with glyphs and flat shapes. I wanted to learn from him and with him as part of this project.

Concepts → Blueprint

Our design approaches

Reflection

💭

Although these designs weren't selected by the client, this experience was valuable to me as I want to improve my branding, logo, and wordmark skills. I've always respected David's sensitivity and artistry as a designer, and I think these logos and wordmarks would have served Viz for Social Good well.