Post-Growth
Zastar
When reading the first rationale from Assignment 1, post growth imaginaries, the frequent words, creative and imaginative are used this continues through out the brief and is a big stepping stone for the work that they are looking for.
In the Assignment 2 brief we are asked to continue our creative thinking in creating a brand identity for our idea from the post growth assignment.
My Object & Findings
1,382 shipping containers fall over board each year. This can have a huge impact on the ocean life due to the contents, which some can contain harmful chemicals, plastic pellets as well as anything that is shipped world wide! The x-press pearl accident where mass amount of containers had fallen overboard in Sri Lanka caused key spieces of turtle population to shrink causing them to be classed as engangered.
When receiving our object my first thoughts was to research the key issues associated with shipping containers. Although the shipping industry contributes to 3% of the worlds pollution I found more distress in the knowledge that shipping containers when fallen overboard can impact ocean life with not only harmful products within the container but the paint coatings used which are toxic to life.
Slades Farm - My Expeirence
Slade Farm was really interesting, I didn’t realise the history behind the land nor did I realise about the housing and there idea of a self-sufficient way of living. The Talbot sisters idea is something that resonates with me personally as I dream of a small holding and becoming self-sufficient with my own re-pairs, food growth, livestock handling and just becoming less reliant on the crippling government and there rules that come with that.
This visit helped my entire team to envision our community idea and see it on a small scale in real life. From this visit we knew there would be more finalising elements that we needed to discover as well as if this land would be ideal for our community. Not only did the land and values of slade farm communicate to me but it helped my team to see the picture as well as being able to see converted shipping containers some as storage and some used to create a gorgeous modern looking cafe! This way of re purposing is not only cost effective but stunning! Where housing nowadays is no less than £800 a month for a one bed flat! Houses being no less than £120,000 for a two bed, converted shippings containers can be accomplished for £30,000 where the vision is also in your hands to create and layout what is useful to yourself.
Research
Following on from our Slades farm visit it was clear that Slades farm would be a great piece of land to base our community. When moving on I created some mindmaps to show our thought process and how our community connect as well as clear aims, from this we intend to further out ideation and create a brighter picture of what our community is and how it works.
Ideation Workshop
This workshop helped to brainstorm our ideas and create this community where we had all elements to ensure all people would be happy within the land, however with feedback and re-evaluating we knew we needed to down scale this community to ensure we had a clear target audience.
Imaginary
In a world without fossil fuels, globalisation would dramatically change, some technology would still be functional through sources such as wind-mills, hydro power and solar-panels. Electric and renewable sources of energy would be vastly increased meaning more access to the equipment needed to be sustainable and be able to have a more self-sufficient way of life. Society wouldn’t need to have to rely on global trade meaning more homestead communities form to decrease the global importation of items such as food clothes and furniture. Shipping containers would still be usable and continue to fall into the ocean so using company tracking to acquire these some containers can then be reused for DIY such as houses, storage, material and much more.
In are first feedback presentation we received some key feedback to help us improve our idea. Firstly to “focus on local community and how they would be interested in living in a shipping container and why that would be better?”
To improve upon our community we needed to find why people would rather live in a converted shipping container than a house or flat and this reason is because shipping containers cost less than half of an average two bed house meaning our idea could help people in need.
Our Community
Our community was to be a place where struggling families or people could live and work to sustain the elements around and learn how to be self-sufficient. We still weren’t certain on our values but future ideation helped to open the idea and find what and who we wanted this for. Not only having a refugee in the team we believed that her experiences could have been avoided with a community like ours, to build trust and bonds with fellow members and learn and educate on sustainable living with support in other areas such as language and finance.
With finalising details still needing to be discussed I took it upon myself to draw a map of key elements in the community. I’d hope that I would have enough time to digitalise this however with certain hold ups and needing to have my time elsewhere I was not able to do this. But I do believe that is helps to visualise the idea as well as act as a way finding source.
Zastar
Website
we needed a website design to show where people would be able to find and research Zastar, as well as file forms to join the community or enroll there children in zastars alternative learning school.
Zastar Community
Zastar is a charity that offers a diverse community which thrives on self-effiency.
Our brand is to help society to remove homeless off the street, to enrich older people's lives through community and to bring financially struggling familes out of despair creating peace and security for life, we also encourage refugees to reach out to Zastar as we believe in helping everyone no matter your circumstance.
Our Values
When creating brand outcomes I knew I wanted to have campaign posters to show our commitment to our values and what we want to achieve
Final Presentation - Imagination
I was determined to present this and had everything written out ready to say so I didn’t freeze or forget what to say, I also encouraged the team to do this and after sitting in a cafe in London discussing who is saying what and when we finally made our way to imagination where we would present in what was called the Clubhouse. When presenting I was still anxious as I was the person who had to introduce the brand and wanted everything to go perfectly, I believe the presentation to imagination was our best yet and was really proud of all of us even if the feedback wasn’t what I hoped for I was super proud to know that we completed the presentation and it was successful!
The feedback given was confusing but at that point I just wanted to go home! I do think there could have been elements improved and altered however I think we got our idea across and that the visual shown were enough to understand and although more/different designs could have been created we simply did not have the time or team choreography to complete this to its maximum potential.