Change Through Design

Marten Sims — Graphic Designer, Grad Student and Co-founder of the Wake Project

Marten Sims is an award winning graphic designer, illustrator and photographer with eight years of diverse experience working in London, Ecuador and Vancouver. His more notable contributions consist of refreshing the WWF and Charles Darwin Foundation brands, as well as producing the new identity systems for BC Place and Sport BC. A keen diver, he is a co-founder of the local non-profit Wake Project Society, and uses his graphical talents to produce Wake's colourful teaching materials. Marten is also a candidate for MAA at Emily Carr University and is studying transformation design practices in relation to marine conservation.

Marten talked about design as the intersection between ideas. Design brings people from different disciplines together, and contributes to expanding areas of experience. In an interactive demonstration, Marten used hula hoops as Venn diagrams to illustrate these intersections.

“Design is interesting because it's a lateral topic aimed at addressing logical problems.”

Jordana Mah — Senior Coordinator of Social Media and Special Events, Schema Magazine

Throughout her life, Jordana has has been asked "What are you?" without having any real answer. However, this has only strengthened her resolve to forge her own path, and through her writing, to show others that people cannot be put so easily into molds.

Jordana currently moonlights as a software developer while pursuing her dreams of being an Asian Carrie Bradshaw slash the next Amy Tan. Besides her work with Schema, Jordana also publishes her own fashion & style blog, along with various other freelance writing work. Her vices include over-sleeping, gangsta rap, shopping, bbt, and cheesy kung-fu movies. She has traveled throughout Europe and Asia, but she will never call home anywhere that is not near the ocean.

Allison Zhou — Director of Marketing and Business Development at Schema Magazine

A graduate from Simon Fraser University with a BBA in marketing and a publishing minor, she met Schema’s founder Alden E. Habacon while working at the Pacific Federal Council, an executive forum for federal departments and agencies in BC. She was intrigued by and related to Schema’s perspective on cultural innovation and identity and subsequently joined the team with a goal to promote and develop the Schema brand and concept. Allison has worked predominantly in a communications role in her past work experience but has also worked in ethnic media and marketing as an account executive for a multicultural advertising and design company.

Born in Shanghai, China, Allison immigrated to Canada when she was 8 and has since called Burnaby home. She is fluent in Mandarin and can adequately converse in Cantonese having taught herself the dialect watching Cantonese dramas as a teenager.

“We ask ourselves what we want to know and read about - that's how a specific idea comes to publication.”

Jordana and Allison discussed publishing as a designed process. Between setting the tone for a creative culture and reaching out to readers, Schema Magazine has established a structure for publishing culturally relevant and aesthetically pleasing content.

Glenn Gaetz — Harvey McKinnon Associates, Liberation BC, Nice Shoes

Glenn spends his days helping various charities raise more money to do more good at Harvey McKinnon Associates, and the rest of his time working at the grassroots level advocating for animal rights. He also recently opened a vegan shoe store - working at a different angle towards social change by making ethical options available.

Glenn explored design as a method of enabling social change by changing behaviour; the best kind of design evokes an emotional response that inspires people to create social change. He also suggested that bad design is born of an artist's instinct to incorporate elements of him/herself into the design.

“What is design, really? Where is our own ego in the things we design?”