Our brand new Fellowship cards have landed! Founder and Creative Director of Together Design, Katja Thielen FRSA, explains the thinking behind them.
My first contact with the RSA was about 14 years ago when I was lucky enough to be selected for the RDI Summer School. It was a transformative experience. We spent four days with inspirational designers from the industry, brainstorming and debating new ideas. Tucked away in the south Devon countryside in Dartington Hall, we had nothing to worry about except to concentrate on a loose brief that was set to stimulate debate and thought.
I remember being so very inspired as our brains were challenged in ways that I hadn't experienced before. Meeting a body of like-minded people encouraged me to move on in my life and shortly after the summer school I co-founded my own design consultancy, Together Design.
It was a pleasure and honour when we were asked to design the new Fellowship cards. The RSA provides a powerful global platform for independent debate and research, creating a foundation to encourage innovative thinking, which often grows into pioneering action. We wanted to take this concept to bring to life the Fellowship network through illustration.
Our aim was to create something which was thought-provoking and full of imagination that Fellows would be proud to carry with them. The final image was created with Adam Simpson, a London based illustrator whom we have worked with on previous occasions.
I hope you'll enjoy your new fellowship card as much as we do!
Hover over the images to see what Fellows are saying about their new Fellowship card:
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I think this design would look lovely on items such as an RSA tie or sweatshirt .....will we see more of it?
Hi Patrick,
No plans for ties and sweatshirts at the moment I'm afraid, but I'm glad you like the design, and we hope to use it more widely.
Adam
Are we allowed to use the image on the likes of Facebook and blogs?
Hi Philip,
Yes, many Fellows have taken a picture of their Fellowship card and posted on social media https://storify.com/Im_AdamT/new-fellowship-card
I really like the idea of connecting with like minded people to solve our most pressing problems in our very crowed world today. My main concern is that wealth is so unevenly distributed around the world. One tenth of one percent of the world's population controls most of the wealth. This is just an estimate, it may be even less people that control most of the wealth. I don't know exactly how it got this way, I know there have always been the rich and the poor but it seems more unevenly distributed today than ever before. I believe this is a problem that must be addressed. Many of these rich folks have established funds to distribute money for good causes but it isn't enough to solve the problem of children going to bed hungry or being sick and not having access to today's modern medicine.
It would be a much nicer world if greed was not so rampant, after all what can one person do with a trillion dollars?
I would like to ask if anyone of you has watched Foster Gamble's "Thrive" on www.thrivemovement.com ? It's better to watch it on a big screen than on a computer. He brings up some very interesting questions and talks about the most innovative solutions to our never ending need for electricity. Many people that I know think we have the knowledge to solve that problem now but because of greed the information is not allowed to disseminate to the public.
I would like to hear your thinking on this problem and any ideas you have on how we can solve it.
Sincerely,
Thomas Michael Eure My friends call me Tom or Tommy
Like the illustration used. Has me reminiscing on Escher's infinite staircases and tessellations now. Interesting rendering of tone and colour, much like the RSA.
I received my card the other day and can only say how much I admire the design and layout. It seems quite apposite given the intellectual ethos of the Royal Society of Arts. My thanks to Katja for her endeavour.