Design for Social Change with Jay Wall
Listen to the full episode on Spotify
Jay Wall is a Principal Creative Director at Briteweb. In this episode, Elspeth talks to Jay about his pathway into the intersection of design and social change, including how he uses graphic design to help create more inclusive cities and public spaces.
Show Links:
Raconteurs - Jay Wall: How the Police Turned Me Into an Activist (video of Jay’s G20 story)
Dazzling Notice AwardsTEDx - Dave Meslin: The antidote to apathy
Next City - Jay Wall: How Graphic Design Can Help Advance Social Equity in Cities
Instagram: Briteweb
Linkedin: Jay Wall, RGD
So I Decided can be found at www.soidecidedpodcast.com and on Instagram @soidecidedpodcast
So I Decided is recorded on Lenapehoking, the traditional homeland of the Lenape people.So I Decided can be found at www.soidecidedpodcast.com and on Instagram @soidecidedpodcast
So I Decided is recorded on Lenapehoking, the traditional homeland of the Lenape people.
TRANSCRIPTION
EH: Hey everyone and welcome back to So I Decided, a podcast about change makers and landscape architecture and design who are making a positive impact on the world around them.
If you haven't yet listened to the introductory episode where I introduced this podcast and myself, please do. In this episode, I chat with Jay Wall, who's a principal creative director at Brightweb, where he leads design, web, brand, and other campaigns that are focused on enabling social change. For over 10 years, Jay has dedicated his career to the intersection of design and social change. In this episode, we talk about Jay's pathway into design activism and how he uses graphic design to make a unique impact on the causes that he believes in and projects with social value.
The projects that Jay is passionate about have required collaboration with landscape architects and have relevance to the field. Jay has led workshops on design for public engagement and the role of inclusive communications to promote participation in building more equitable cities. I think Jay is a really interesting person to talk to because he's using his chosen profession of graphic design to make an impact on public spaces and the cities where he's worked.
In ways that I think are really inspiring for up and coming change makers who might be wondering what they can do with the design background. I also think it's important to talk with allied professionals and people who are working to make more just, equitable, accessible and beautiful cities and ways for people to participate in the public process.
I hope that you all find this conversation as inspiring as I did. Many, many thanks to Jay Wall for joining me and sharing his story, perspective and thoughts on the city with us.
Here's the conversation.
EH: Hey Jay, thank you so much for joining me. How's it going?
JW: Hey Elspeth. Yeah, glad to be here. I'm joining you on a lovely sunny spring day that everything outside my window is bursting to green. So it's one of my favorite times of year.
EH: Me too. And it's so nice to see you again. I don't really even remember how I came across your portfolio and your work, but when I did and however I did, I just felt like it was such a unique approach to design and graphic design. And I mean, it was obvious to me that you were doing a lot of work in the public realm. And yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation with you today. I know it's going to be a short and sweet one, but I'm very excited for you to tell us about yourself and your background and some of the things that you do that are, I think, really unique to the ways that people might see graphic design and its power and influence that it can have on ourselves and the places we live.
So that's all I'll say. And I wonder if you could start with introducing yourself in your own words and a little bit about your background.
JW: Great. Yeah, thanks for the invitation. It's funny to be thinking and talking about public realm and looking back at the start of my journey, I had no idea that that was even a thing or what that meant. But we'll dig into that.
So just to kind of zoom out a bit, yeah, I describe myself as a creative director, dedicated to social change So I've spent the last 15 years or so kind of working around the intersections of design, branding, communications, cities, public space, all kinds of different social causes. And we'll kind of get into the journey of what led me there. But I guess today I work in a creative agency called Brightweb. I'm coming to you from Guelph. As we're talking about spaces and cities, I think it's important to acknowledge the original and still today caretakers of this place.
Guelph actually, my understanding is the traditional name for this place is the Thadinadonnih. It translates loosely into where they build cities or they build cities there, which is like very relevant and interesting that that is the place that I now call home.
It's the Dish with One Spoon Treaty territory. We've got the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, which of course are part of the Anishinaabe people, Haudenosaunee, as well as going further back with the Attawandaron, also known as Neutral people living in this area and growing and thriving economies and everything. Just kind of acknowledging that and positioning myself as I'm actually a 10th generation settler in Canada. So, I grew up in Northern Ontario in the North Bay area, small town, very rural life. I think the cool side of that was even though I had no interest in cities other than I loved coming down to Toronto for a Blue Jays game every couple of years or something. My brother and I, my older brother, we would just spend our time playing in our backyard, playing sports.
I was obsessed with designing logos. I didn't know that was a thing, but I was drawing logos of hockey teams or drawing maps of imaginary countries and coming up with names of sports teams that might play in these fictional cities in my brain and then designing uniforms for them. So, it was sort of like this very early kind of dipping my toes into graphic design without really knowing it.
Fast forward to kind of my early adult life, I moved to Toronto. I was like, okay, I'll embrace the city for a little bit. I moved to Toronto to go to school at York University in Sheridan College. It was the Bachelor of Design program. When I say design, of course, that's a lot of things, but it really focused on graphic design and all the kind of surrounding disciplines like web design, communication, media theory, and so on. So, my experience of design school was really interesting because for one thing, just immersing myself into the world of graphic design, wrapping my head around that. But more broadly, living in Toronto was just such a different experience for me and I decided to embrace it and it really opened my eyes to so many different ways of living. People who had very different backgrounds than I did. Yeah, I just kind of opened up myself to that.
EH: And then how did you get involved or interested in public space and yourself as a citizen? I know that you had a significant event happen in your life that sort of influenced that.
JW: Yeah, so there's a couple moments around the last couple years of design school where that came together. So, I was starting to, you know, at design school you talk about like, oh, can design save the world? Or like, you know, that of course is a kind of a naive statement, which I have a more nuanced answer for today. But that was like a thing we were starting to talk about, like what is the role of design in like more than just selling stuff because graphic design as we know it is like largely born out of like industrialization and commercialism. So like what is the, how can graphic design or communications or branding be used to advance the public good in some way?
So these are some questions I was starting to like wrestle with. Around that same time, I decided to take on an internship at Spacing magazine. And Spacing kind of originated out of this question of whose space is public space. My time there really opened my eyes to urban planning and how like the stuff that happens at city council or city planning meetings, even if it seems dry and irrelevant to a lot of people, actually really impacts people's lives. And it is a social justice issue. It seems obvious probably to most people listening to this podcast, Elspeth, but like to me at that point, that was a new idea that like how we design cities is a social justice issue. And so that was sort of like starting to crack open this world of curiosity around social justice, around public space and city planning.
And now the really pivotal moment for me happened in the summer of 2010. So a lot of folks in Toronto and maybe others outside of Toronto heard of it, the G20 summit in downtown Toronto in June 2010. Like public space was transformed. So you had big concrete barricades around downtown. You had thousands of police officers flown in from all over Canada.You also had tens of thousands of protesters out in the streets. So I went and joined the protests sort of out of like curiosity mostly. I didn't know anything about global economic policy, the stuff they were discussing behind closed doors. But I was kind of concerned about this disruption and transformation of public space, which in my eyes seemed like a kind of a negative move to just kind of turn it into this militarized police fortress. So I kind of joined the protest out of that curiosity, but it was really like a parade. It was like jovial people from so many different causes that they were passionate about. And as folks know now, like things didn't go great that weekend. Unfortunately, there were some conflicts, a lot of police violence. There was over a thousand people arrested and most of those were unlawful arrests and detentions. And that's actually what happened to me. So one morning I was walking down Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. I had plans to go see some friends that day. I was like, day two, I'm staying away from the protest. It's getting too chaotic down here with all these cops. And a bunch of police came out and they said, this guy, let's get him. And I was just snatched and disappeared off the street for 20 hours and no one knew where I was. And my friends and family, you know, fear to bad things until I kind of surfaced on the other side of after the detention center, after the strip searches, after the dehumanizing conditions.
I don't want to dwell on that. But the point of that is I came out of that with a lot of trauma, but also suddenly some awareness of what does it actually feel like to experience injustice? You know, as someone who has experienced a lot of privilege in my life, all these layers of privilege, suddenly those things, those conceptual ideas around privilege and accessingnpublic space became more concrete. And you know, I decided as I processed the trauma and decided to turn that anger of injustice into something positive, I decided to kind of commit my work as a designer to social justice and to social change. Along that same timeline, I had a high profile lawsuit against the police with several years spent in court separately having the police investigated for the things they did that weekend. And many people wouldn't have the privilege again.
I felt it was my duty because I do have these privileges as a white guy to take a stand, to hold those forces to account, to challenge that power. And then again, where this comes back to public space is like, oh, I had this experience that one weekend of kind of being targeted in public space because I looked like, you know, a young person who might be an activist. But many other people experience, you know, G20 rules every day of their life in their neighborhood.
EH: Yeah, I've heard you tell that story on another podcast, which I should link in the show notes. And hearing you say it to me firsthand has, again, like another weight to it. I just never experienced something like that in my life. And these are things that very unfortunately happen at large to people who don't look like you and I.
In processing that trauma and coming to that realization, you've obviously done something very positive with it. What are some of the things that you see are helpful?
JW: You know, coming out of that experience, like certainly it was heavy, right? It was heavy. It's like, how do I have some, how do I take some of this power back? How do I maybe even have some fun while being full of so much anger of injustice? And so, you know, I started working as an independent designer, started my own little design studio, working with causes that were important to me. You know, that included environmental organizations, indigenous solidarity work. It also included public space activism, you know, like kind of getting up to creative trouble. Collaborations with groups like the Urban Repair Squad, they would, you know, do various like public space installations or art to draw attention to power dynamics of public space, especially around pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, the lack thereof. Or being a part of like billboard takeover projects where in one afternoon 40 billboards around the city were transformed into art pieces, you know, collaborations like that. So there was these moments of like trying to have some joy and levity while we're confronting the dark, the darker forces.
EH: Being there has a different kind of effect, empower and empowerment, I suppose, and being surrounded by people who feel the same way.
JW: Yeah. There was a sense of like, I need to do something. What can I do? What are my skills? Right? So some people plan cities, some people write policy. I was like, I can make things that look good and that kind of compel people to hopefully take some action or I can use my eye for typography and like imagery to like draw people's attention to some injustice. So like things like that and, you know, did kind of, you know, now in my work today, so over time, like that small design studio that I built grew into a rally rally.
We described ourselves as a design studio dedicated to social change, working with lots of nonprofits, foundations, municipal governments, especially around the realm of urban planning policy, purpose-driven businesses and B Corps. And then a couple of years ago, we ended up merging Rally Rally into Bright Web, where I work today.
So, you know, we are a team of about 25 folks spread across Canada working on brand and web and campaign and publication projects, all with like different organizations and governments and businesses that are doing good work. And so how we come back to sort of like addressing the hedonists in the world and doing something about it, like how can we help and even back to that initial naive question I asked when I was a student, like can design save the world? It's like, I have now accepted that my role, you know, design is not going to save the world. However, we have a role to play in hopefully addressing challenges and moving solutions forward.
So what that looks like for our clients, let's say if they're, you know, they're a city planning team that is wanting to come up with some better policy, we can work with them to make that process more inclusive through good communications and design so that like policies that are designed reflect the lived experiences of many, including marginalized folks who might experience systemic barriers to participation. Or maybe we're doing a website for climate action organization and it's like, you know, they're really the heroes who are like moving the work forward and we are there as like humble supports to help them look good, to help them tell their story more clearly, to help them build their movement, to raise funds, to find partners. It's like this sort of like invisible layer of support that actually helps them to show up more beautifully in the world to have a greater impact.
EH: Absolutely. And you've just been doing this for such a long time now and you're still fueled by these experiences you've had. I know also the last time we spoke, I have mentioned a lot of other influences, people you've connected with, including conferences you regularly attend. Who are some of those great people who think similarly?
JW: I think going back to 2013, so a decade now, one of my first introductions to the space was Zara Ibrahim.
So Zara's background is in architecture and found that there weren't a lot of folks who looked like her kind of leading really important conversations. She wanted to do something about it. So she started a design consultancy or think tank called Architects. And she was working in East Scarborough at the East Scarborough storefront on a project to kind of transform an old police station into a community hub called the East Scarborough storefront. And she just kind of like put out the invitation to other socially engaged design folks in Toronto. Hey, I'm there like once a week in the afternoon. Anyone who wants to come, you're welcome to come join me for a community meeting.
And I went. And one thing led to another, I ended up volunteering there with the landscape architects and the local youth who were designing the graphics for their new sports court. It's basically a basketball court slash soccer court slash public space that used to be a police parking lot with fences around it. And it's now this like beautiful, goulash, colorful public space that opens up onto like the adjoining apartment buildings. And I got to work there and not as the, what was powerful for me is like typically as a creative director, as a designer, I'm hired to like bring my ideas to the table and kind of like make recommendations. I think this would look good and here's why. Of course with a lot of deep listening, but still recommendations. This was a shift because the local youth that we were working with, it was their space to design and through this whole process, we were trying to like help them develop professional skills or at least an introduction to these disciplines. And so alongside Zara and with folks from ERA Architects and Sustainable, which is another architecture firm in Toronto doing great work, we worked with this group of youth and cameup with something like really interesting that spoke to them.
And so the shift for me was from being the expert to being more of a facilitator. So I'm here with the perspective and I'm here to guide them in developing ideas and graphics for what's ultimately going to become their space. So moving forward, I really kept that with me. One thing led to another, I was grateful to work with Zara on many projects over the years and she's gone on to do other great things. She's now a co-founder of Monumental Projects doing really amazing work, especially around the intersection of racial justice and urban policy.
So Zara is absolutely one of my favorite people and it's been a pleasure to support and work with her over the years.
I think another person I want to give a shout out to is another Jay, Jay Pitter. I haven't had the privilege of working on as many things with Jay Pitter. However, she's just so brilliant at speaking about power dynamics of public space, including with lenses of gender, with lenses of class and race. And in particular, I remember a lecture that she gave at the AGO a few years ago, speaking about landscape architecture and how landscape architecture in its nature is sort of tied to colonization, like carving up the land in a certain way. And I try to be mindful of that today. Like it doesn't mean landscape architecture has to be battered, but like how do you do that? How do you practice that in a positive way that's restorative for communities, that's restorative to the earth and other ecologies? So there's a couple of people that have really kind of been influential in my journey, especially in the Toronto area. Zooming out more broadly outside of Toronto, I guess because of some of the work that I've been doing around communications and community engagement projects in cities across North America.
Back in 2015, I was selected by NextCity. So NextCity is a US-based solutions journalism nonprofit. They do a really amazing reporting on solutions in cities and try to scale, spread one idea from like one city to the next city. And so every year they have a small conference called Vanguard, NextCity Vanguard happens in a different city. And it's not like a bunch of talking heads in an auditorium. It is a group of about 40 people. It's kind of like a 40 under 40 kind of thing. You're spending a few days walking around the city, meeting local activists, entrepreneurs, designers, planners, talking about the challenges they're facing, exchanging ideas because people are coming from all over North America and a few more internationally who are coming to Vanguard, all kind of emerging leaders in their own respective areas. So I got to attend Vanguard in Reno, Nevada in 2015. That was a really powerful moment and I became a super keen alumnus after that and went to several more NextCity Vanguard conferences and I still go occasionally because it's such a great community. And out of that for me has come like a great greater awareness and ideas about like solutions, even those coming from cities that aren't always the ones that we talk about all the time, as well as some really great connections with folks that like we've teamed up on urban planning projects in places like North Carolina. So yeah, those are a few of the kind of the sources that I'm grateful for.
EH: I feel like through the course of this conversation, you've done such a great job illustrating for us the many different scales that you work on and the kinds of things that you're thinking about from, I guess, helping clients with presenting themselves better, both digitally and I assume in print media to thinking about schools and public spaces to, you know, potentially even like a regional plan. Can you speak to some of the broader public work you and your team have done or doing?
JW: For sure. Yeah, I think a lot of the stuff that we've done in the urban realm, like outside of me, just kind of doing more activisty public space projects that are more at a micro scale, kind of like, you know, inch by inch, but zooming out more broadly, a lot of the work has to do with like urban planning policy. So not necessarily designing specific parks or public spaces, but what is the overarching vision or themes and policies that shape the places that we call home. So an example of that would be, you know, I mentioned North Carolina. So we worked in Mecklenburg County, which is essentially Charlotte, the city of Charlotte and kind of surrounding area. So we helped them to develop a new parks and recreation master plan. And that was led by our friends at Agency Landscape and Planning based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as a couple other collaborators from North Carolina and across the states. So where they were kind of coming to the table as the subject matter experts in equity driven planning and landscape architecture, we added the layer of like, okay, how do we open up this process to make it more inclusive? How do we design communications materials in a way that draws people in? So we often come up with a sort of like a product brand or like a campaign look and feel where we're coming up with like the naming, the messaging, the graphic system, the social media ads, the print ads, the things that are going to be in your hands when you show up to a public meeting or the things you might see on your screen if it's a virtual meeting, all of these things. And it's kind of meant to, again, open it up and make sure that you don't just have the keeners or those with the privilege of time and access who are participating in the process.
So we find by doing this, you can get better participation from racialized or other marginalized folks, younger people who may feel like, you know, timid to participate in other types of consultation venues. I think a big part of it is just like also making it irrelevant. So like not speaking of policy jargon or design or landscape jargon, but like, hey, this is what's changing and here's what's on the table for discussion. So we did that in Mecklenburg County.
We also like, we've done tons of projects in the city of Toronto and other Canadian municipalities. Another example would be actually right now with the city of Toronto working on the official plan review or the municipal comprehensive review. That in its own is a bit of a technical name. So we decided to call it our plan Toronto. Essentially it's a roadmap for how Toronto can become the most inclusive city in the world as we grow over the next 30 years and beyond. Thinking about climate change, affordable housing, truth and reconciliation with indigenous communities, employment areas, and so on. You know, in that case, we've been partnering with Dillon Consulting. Again, they're kind of leading the overall engagement process, bringing the urban planning policy perspective to the table. And then we're adding this layer of design and communications to support them.
Another one at like a different kind of scale is with the city of Greater Sudbury right now where they're rethinking their long-term solid waste management plan. So it's kind of like, how do we, you know, do we keep digging more landfill sites? Do we think about more circular models of economies so that we're not just like producing and throwing stuff out? What do we do with recycling as some policies are changing and composting? And so again, like that's like a very nerdy topic, like solid waste planning. And so again, in that case, we've been working with them to kind of make the process like fun where you have these like kind of quirky characters that look like garbage bins and blue bins and compost bins and yard waste bags. And they have like these googly eyes and like they show up on like in graphics. And it's kind of like drop people into the process and make it more inviting to participate.
So those are a few examples of things that we're excited about. And of course, that's like really specific to the community engagement realm. But like we're also working more broadly on lots of and know reports and websites and rebrands and so on.
EH: Love what you're saying. It's about giving people the information they need to easily understand, to easily engage. And you know, I think ultimately take any mystery out of these processes, you know, what's happening in our city, what's happening in our place that we live. And I think you're right that most of the time, I know this is very relevant to design and public engagement processes that we're talking about that you don't tend to get a very distributed group, representative group of the people who actually live in this place. And do you find that engaging parties like yours and consultants like yours is done very often or those are only very specific groups of designers who are thinking this way or thinking beyond the traditional engagement process?
JW: Honestly, I've seen a lot of encouraging growth in this. So generally speaking, kind of what we would describe as design for social change or some people might say design for social good. Like when I was kind of coming out of school 13 years ago, like it was, you know, I certainly did not invent the concept of it. Like people have been talking and working around these issues for years, but there weren't that many people who are like really dedicated to it. I looked around and didn't see it, you know, there weren't that many folks. I had to kind of do some digging.
Since then, I think this whole field has really kind of like blossomed. And so there's lots of other creative agencies or design studios kind of working in similar spaces. And then in terms of, again, our approach to graphics for community engagement. So actually about more than a decade ago, another one of my collaborators in Toronto, Dave Meslin, who's a fantastic kind of activist and community choreographer as he describes himself, he came up with something called the Dazzling Notice Awards. It came inspired by this TEDx talk that he gave about like comparing how, let's say how Mikey sells shoes to how a municipality might encourage like participation in the consultation process with like a black and white like jargony ad in a newspaper. Like it's like this has to be better. And so he saw one municipality like doing a good job and he kind of like jokingly invented an award and like sent them an award in the mail. And it got some attention. So he decided to do it again. He turned it into an award series. And so I ran that with Dave for a while, Dazzling Notice Awards. And it has since kind of become embedded within the IAP2's engagement awards that they have every year.
But that's to say, my point here is back then, if you were putting any effort into like communications and graphics, it was like, wow, good for you. You're special. And now, and so when I was like, you know, putting forth these ideas a decade ago, it was really kind of, it seemed more novel to people. Now it's like the baseline. And so I'd be giving talks and workshops and lectures at universities and different organizations across North America with like, how can folks do better at communications and engagement? And I think a lot of like up and coming city builders or landscape architects are well attuned to that. And they also, a lot of them come to it with a bit of a social justice bent in why they want to be designers. And so there's a lot of openness to it. And I think increasing appetite for continuing to raise the bar and do good. So that means there's more folks out there, I think, who are kind of active in this space. And I'm glad to see it. It forces us to keep being really intentional about what we're doing and to raise the bar with what we're doing creatively and also making sure that it's resonating in a real way with people.
EH: Do you still look at cities the same way that you did 10 years ago?
JW: I think I've definitely had an evolution of my perspective on cities over time and how I experience it. I think initially I was like, oh, cities are a place where things happen that you are just sort of like consuming. Like, it's not a place for you to shape or to change.
And for me, like, I think the biggest switch that got flipped through some of my work on these projects was that cities are always changing. They're always growing and evolving. And you don't have to just be along for the ride and experiencing it and complaining about it. I think we have agency to shape policy, to run for council, to be imaginative and propose ideas that get other people excited about what we could grow into. I have a different perspective on power dynamics of cities and public space. And even though what I just said might sound a bit optimistic, I think there's also within that like I have this layer of not everyone experiences public space the same way I do. And how can we address those inequities? So when I look at a street or I look at a park, I see all these layers. I see what was the past of this place? Who was here before? Why aren't they here now? Who's here today? Who's enjoying it? What does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it smell like? How could that be better and more beautiful? What might it look like in the future? So there's all these layers. And I think the tying it back to like my work in communications is I think these designing thoughtful processes for people to have a say in the future of their neighborhoods,their cities, their regions.
That's really where designing communications comes in and hopefully to open that door to more folks to participate.
So that because there's all these like invisible forces that are shaping our physical experiences. There's all these policies that we don't know about or we're not aware of that actually impact those decisions about why that street is a certain way, why cars are driving at a certain speed, why the air is more polluted in this neighborhood than that neighborhood. Let's get informed about those things and shape that and hopefully build a world that's like more beautiful, more resilient and more equitable. So that's what I'm here for.
EH: I love that so much. I think you said it before at one point that all processes are designed and it's especially as landscape architects, placemakers. How can we think about assisting to design greater whole system and beyond for all people and planet?
JW: Absolutely. I love that note about systems. Places are parts of systems and they're not separate from each other. So that's where all these layers come together.
EH: Exactly.
Well, thank you so much, Jay. It's been a really lovely conversation. I'm so happy to talk with you and it's really great to hear your perspective. I always learn so much when I talk with you and I just appreciate your honest perspective and sharing yourself and your story with us. Thank you so much for joining me.
JW: You're welcome, Elspeth. I'm happy to be here and thanks for holding space for me to geek out a bit with you.