Can Design Change the World?
Posted Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 3:06 pm by Eve (41 posts)
What if you could do something remarkable for others to shake up the cycle of your usual work routine, re-invigorate your creativity, while at the same time using your powers for good, would you?
Oh, and staying up all night to do it. Did I mention that?
The CreateAthon is a volunteer 24-hour marathon that provides high quality print and web design work for small local non profits, pro bono. Nationwide, in over 42 different local studios, this effort has benefited 1,008 nonprofit organizations with 2,143 projects valued at $8.4 million.
At 7:30am last Friday September 19th, a groggy but excited gang of 7 designers arrived at Basis Branding’s studio in Falls Church, VA ( the CreateAthon location in the DC metro area), set up our macbooks, reviewed the projects we’d been assigned, and started downing the first of many, many cups of coffee. During 90 minute discovery sessions with our new clients, we did what we usually do when we start a new project: defined scope, set deadlines and expectations, exchanged contact information and critical organization design assets, and planned the steps we would take to achieve our client’s goals. However, when we asked them “Will you be available for final approval around 2am?”, it became clear that we weren’t in Kansas anymore.
We worked tirelessly through the day and night, struggling with CSS cross-browser issues, blown deadlines, scope creep, creative blockages — all the things one usually encounters on a design project, only on a highly compressed time line without a second to spare. There was something electric in the air — an energy that made us push harder to solve every design challenge we came across, without settling for anything less than our best. By 5am on Saturday morning, the work was complete – be it brochure, web site, poster, marketing campaign, postcard – and the designers were giddy with exhaustion and ready to fall over. But like Christmas morning, we knew our clients had something wonderful to wake up to, and the pride and satisfaction of a job well done made every sleepless hour worthwhile.
This marked my 5th CreateAthon and I can honestly say this yearly event is one of the most intense, profound, challenging, exhausting and utterly soul-satisfying experiences in my professional life. Why? Because for brief period of time I am not only reminded why I love what I do for a living, but that with the right process, skill set and desire to change the world, if only a small corner of it, even the impossible is possible in 24 hours.
