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Special Design Award ‘Action on Climate Change’


The IIID Award is a great celebration of what Information Designers contribute to Society.
They apply Creativity and Design Thinking to solve complex Communication Problems, and to improve every aspect of Human Life.

In the framework of the IIID Award 2020 the International Institute for Information Design (IIID) in cooperation with the BCSSS announced a Special Award for ‘Actions on Climate Change’ supported by excellent, convincing and credible information design works among all submissions independently of the selected category:

IIID Award Action on Climate Change

  1. Healthcare: Information design that makes physical, social and mental well-being possible.
  2. Financial: Submissions should focus on money matters including: economics, personal financial management, banking and investments.
  3. Wayshowing: Navigation in unfamiliar environments.
  4. Traffic and Public Transport: Ensuring people get where they need to go by foot, underground, bike, car, bus, airplane, boat…
  5. Social Affairs: Projects that make a positive, tangible, impact on a specific population.
  6. Emergency / Safety: Ensuring hazards are properly identified and avoided, and the consequences when they’re not.
  7. Corporate Design and Communications: Helping companies/businesses to fully and completely express themselves and what they have to offer.
  8. Didactics: Projects that focus on educational or instructional information design.
  9. Products and Services: Projects making products and services accessible, understandable and beneficial for the users.
  10. Editorial: Submission related to media, journalism and writing.
  11. Universal Design: Information design that creates an inclusive environment.
  12. Future Concepts: New and innovative projects. Something that makes us wish we had thought of it first!
  13. Research: Methods and tools for information design.
  14. Sustainability: Focused on the relevance of ecological issues and impact on natural resources as well as “green” design practices for information design.
  15. Student Work: Open to those who are studying to be information designers with no restriction on the theme of the submission.

© IIID

Further detailed information including entries and fees is avaliable at IIID Award 2020

Save the Date!
Submit by 18 March 2020

When we travel, information designers help us find the way. When we buy things, they help us to make informed choices. When we pay tax or claim benefits from government, they explain our rights and responsibilities and make the process run smoothly. They reveal what data means, they help us find information quickly, and they explain how complex systems work. Information designers help us understand health and healthcare systems, and how our pension works. And more.

In spite of all this, most people know too little about information design.
The IIID Award seeks to put that right by showing off the best work.

Since 2017 there is a growing collaboration between the BCSSS and designaustria through BCSSS Managing Director Stefan Blachfellner, who is one of the invited Jury members of the IIID Award 2020. At the 90th anniversary of designaustria Blachfellner invited the celebrants to reflect on the systemic impact of design, especially on the social fabrique, as design enhances values through its syntax, semantics, and patterns, creating meaning and technological solutions and nudges users into intentional behaviour.

Furthermore Blachfellner is a member of the designaustria Expert Cluster Sustainable Design since 2018. The group invites to define together how ecological sustainability in and through design can be brought into a realistic implementation. In Spring 2019 the Expert Cluster launched a promising event series called “DESIGN the CHANGE!” in the designforum of  designaustria in cooperation with the Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism and the Institute of Design Research Vienna.

Another inspiring meeting regarding the interaction of Systems Science and Design took place in May 2019 at the BCSSS. On the occasion of a visit from the Functional Design Department of the Art Academy in Riga, Latvia, Martin Fößleitner, BCSSS member as well as Founder and Managing Director of hi-pe.at, design partner of the BCSSS, organized the dialogue with Stefan Blachfellner.

The afternoon focused on three significant connections between Systems Science and Design:
1. Design works as an amplifier to existing societal structures and dynamics.
2. Design has the capacity to create new narratives and to shape political life. It can work to enable generations to express and develop their views and it can also be used to nudge people towards changing their behaviours.
3. The battle between facts and their false portrayal – whether by mistake or purposely – shows the urgent need of science to partner with design to better communciate its findings. Data and its interpretation through visualisation is becoming a new professional profile among designers.

Following the exciting and encouraging development on that more than relevant issue we are all the more delighted about this year’s Special Award for ‘Action on Climate Change’.

The award mirrors our increasing endeavour in the applied research fields of ‘Regenerative Circular Economy‘ and ‘Nudging for Sustainability’ and the foundational and applied research in ‘Systems Science and Pattern Literacy’.