Dott 07. “Dott 07 (Designs of the time 2007) is a year of community projects, events and exhibitions based in North East England that explore what life in a sustainable region could be like – and how design can help us get there.”

Community projects will focus on urban farming, making homes energy efficient, reproductive health, transportation systems , education, and design for people with dementia. This looks like a grand convergence of the last few years of work by the UK Design Council.  ¶

Towards a New Visualization of Secrecy?. “Representations of Secrecy within Contemporary Terrorism and Counterterrorism.” A conference today in Amsterdam.

“How are terror and counterterrorist networks visualized? How can we locate and visualize their clandestine operations and network structures, both on a real and virtual level? And how does the visualization of these networks correlate to an operational strategy of symbolic violence, coercive intimidation and political fear?”  ¶

¡Gigante: Despierta! / Giant: Awake!. A DVD compilation of short films chronicling the historic immigrant rights marches of 2006 and the events that led up to them. See selected clips online.  ¶

Universal Design in the Washington Post. A nice introduction. And nice to see some mainstream exposure.  ¶

Sappi: Ideas that Matter 2007. Annual grants for print design projects in the public interest. The 2007 deadline is May 31.  ¶

Baghdad: Mapping the Violence. A geographic interface to four years of BBC stories on violence in central Baghdad. A nice integration of time and place, though the hard boundaries of the “ethnic areas” seem a little misleading. On that see this. And note, each dot represents 10 or more people.  ¶

Collectives, Considered. Last month’s ID Magazine profiled 40 design collectives around the world. Nice to see. When researching my article on design collectives last year I had a very hard time finding anything in print.  ¶

Designing politics - The politics of design. The International Design Forum in Ulm, Germany is again sponsoring grants for political design projects. The deadline for proposals is March 31. See the requirements.  ¶

Zimbabwe: Graffiti Protests Multiply. Political graffiti surges in popularity because of the crackdown on nearly every other means of expression.

See also: “After graffiti calling for Mugabe to be ousted appeared in the bathrooms of an army barracks, the government announced a 300 percent pay increase for soldiers and teachers. ‘It is a way of buying off the soldiers,’ said [opposition activist] Moyo. ‘Mugabe is a terrified man.’”  ¶

Random Acts of Designess. Freelance designer Guy Paterson had an idea: pick a cause and do some unprompted design work.  ¶

Arab Governments and the Internet. An update to the 2004 survey of free expression and restriction of the Internet. Organized by country, along with a new section on Arabic blogs.  ¶

Congressional web sites still suck. See the full 2006 report (5.6 Mb PDF) from the Congressional Management Foundation.  ¶

Health Care That Works. “A Google Map mash-up designed to visually illustrate the economic and racial disparities that exist in New York City's health care system. The website overlays data on NYC hospital closures between 1985 and 2007 onto an interactive city-wide map that can display either the racial or economic demographics of the Five Boroughs during three distinct time periods: 1985, 1995, and 2005. Using this tool, visitors can visually see how hospital closures disproportionately impact poor neighborhoods and communities of color (this is particularly vivid in Central Brooklyn). Text on the sidebars guides the user through each decade and demographic overlay, explaining the changing conditions of the city and the impact that closures have on underserved communities.”

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