Meet Julie
During the Milan workshop, Professor Becky Earley (UAL) sat down with Julie Hornix (VanBerlo) to talk social design, megatrends, and summer reading recommendations. You can download the podcast on iTunes or Soundcloud now!
Julie has written the post below to accompany the podcast.
Over the past couple of months Ivo, Marjorie and I have had the pleasure of taking part in the Trash-2-Cash (T2C) project representing the Dutch design agency VanBerlo.
VanBerlo is passionate about helping our planet.
We're also passionate about design and technological opportunities. So for us, this partnership was a match made in heaven. Here’s a short round up of our role and goals for T2C.
Dream Green!
At VanBerlo, we crave new approaches to the re-use of materials and waste reduction. To dream is to think big, and by thinking big you can come up with countless ideas to help the environment through design. We love to bridge the ideas with the visual, enabling us to go that one step further.
Joining the T2C project, VanBerlo’s goal is to help recycle textile from a design-driven perspective. Alongside the other T2C partners, we aim to increase the value of the end product (instead of traditional downcycling) - to upcycle and contribute to the grave to cradle initiative - no matter which industry is involved.
Not only do we bring global trend research to the table, but we also explore ideas in novel ways that help to produce surprising insights.
As our Senior Designer Ivo Lamers explains,“We believe that design thinking will help bridge the gap between science, technology and practice. This approach helps to boost the entire T2C project! At VanBerlo we often use metaphors to get discussions started, intensified, structured or sometimes even ended. Using the superhero metaphor during the Helsinki workshop initiated a huge team spark and helped to create common understanding and a common language between the partners about scenarios.”
We make sure that our ideas aren’t just cool; but that they also answer business challenges and user needs. At the end of the day success for us is that the results should be accessible and globally relevant, rather than just being created for a niche market.
Julie Hornix, Design Researcher, Van Berlo
Podcast links
VanBerlo
Change Ahead book
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close book
This American Life podcast
99% invisible podcast