From 2011-2016, I taught students how to develop tactical design actions that enable neighborhood associations to better serve their community.

Building identity through typography.

After exploring the South Bronx and working with Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation (WHEDCO) for several field trips, the team realized that the community development organization has developed into a strong force in the community; with their design solution, the team wanted to harness and amplify this energy. They noticed that there is a lot of vibrant cultural capital behind closed doors, so they decided to “turn the boulevard inside out” by making a creative toolkit for community activation. The toolkit consists of a customized vernacular-inspired font—the “boulefont”—stencils, and various visual and programming tools for WHEDCO to use to enliven the streets and create a better sense of belonging for those diverse businesses on the Boulevard.

Student team 2013: Kara Bermejo, Gonzalo Perez Paredes, Carolyn Louth, Sarah Markes

Economic boost via cultural activation.

The Bed-stuy Business Improvement District (BID) team spent countless hours out-and-about in the neighborhood conducting mapping exercises and speaking with neighbors at local businesses. Through this field research they discovered that Bed-stuy residents have a great deal of pride about where they live, but the pride is not outwardly expressed, which seemed like a missed opportunity. Their proposed solution is to engage the robust local community of artists to use Bed-stuy as their canvas, commissioning them to paint murals and design street banners, within branding guidelines that use the colors from the flags of the many West Indian nations where residents hail from.

Student team 2013: Ektaa Aggarwal, David Al-Ibrahim and Danielle Escobar

Encouraging cleaner and revitalized streets.

The EWVIDCO team tacked the very un-glamorous topic of poorly managed trash pickup in Williamsburg. In order to create awareness around the trash issue, the team created a tool for the North Brooklyn revitalization organization EWVIDCO, now renamed Evergreen, to garner support from neighborhood businesses, residents and visitors in order to petition for better trash management from the city: a visual campaign with the centerpiece of a sharable animated video starring Mr. Trashyburg, a charismatic anthropomorphic trash bag that wants himself and other trash bags to be properly taken care of.

Student team 2013: Tomas Ives, Vidhushri Ladha, Julia Seltzer