Remain Neutral

This project was one of the most challenging projects that i worked on during my time at The New School. My partner Talia and I had to find a way to make an audience interact with our quote somehow. Being in New York City, we had about the largest audience that anybody could ask for. Our quote from philosopher Edmund Burke spoke the loudest to us.

We decided that the easiest way to make our quote approachable to people in NYC would be to focus on a moral issue New Yorkers see on a daily basis: homelessness. By giving our quote a narrow focus, we were able to conceptualize how to bring more awareness to this problem. The video below can expand on what we were able to come up with, check it out!

Initial Concept

Our first thought was to create a simple postcard that contained our quote, and a link to a webpage that listed local food banks that needed resources and volunteers. However we figured that the average person is not going to take a postcard from a stranger and immediately go to their website. We also felt that the audience was not interacting with the quote enough with this concept.

Second Concept

To further engage the audience we decided we wanted to give people a physical object, and with that object, a call to action to aid the moral crisis immediately. The object would essentially be a lunchbox. A box filled with a sandwich, an apple, and cookies. We realized handing out pre-made lunches would not solve the issue of homelessness, but rather it would make people more aware of the problem. This tactic forced people to go out and interact with someone facing homelessness. We were hopeful that if people could have a
human-to-human connection with those dealing with this problem, it might make New Yorkers more empathetic and catalyze further steps to help abolish this problem.

In order to hand out these lunchboxes we proposed setting up a table in a park and handing the lunchboxes out to passersby. We created ephemera and pins as a way for participants to feel more involved with the quote and the task we were giving them. The responses from our classmates were very similar to our first idea. We were overcomplicating our message with branded items and a large task that many people would most likely not want to participate in. While we still had not solved the problem of having an audience interact with our quote, creating a brand for out message was a great experience and that in turn led us to a simpler conclusion.

FInal COncept

Our final concept became much simpler. We used the cards we created for the lunchboxes and simply wrapped sandwiches in newsprint with the cards attached. With our quote giving the audience the call to action we instructed people to simply keep the sandwich, or pass it along to someone in need.