For a couple of months, at Big New Ideas, I’ve been tinkering about the idea of a weekend event that brought together creatives to use our skills to help a local non-profit. I believe in what many non-profits do and I believe that as designers we have a role to play. However, with our society is moving at an ever quicker pace, and time commitment is getting harder, something needed to be done.

That is when the idea of the “24 Hour Design Jam” (As it is currently called) came about. Where every month, we get 6-8 creatives together and over Friday and Saturday apply the creative process to develop an appropriate brand and plant the seeds for a nonprofit’s online presences. This weekend was the first 24 hour jam we did with a local non-profit in Providence, RI called Young Voices. They are a youth led advocacy group training young people to become leaders in their communities.

The Team: Aya Pogrebinsky; Greg Nemes; Joshua Vizzacco; Julie Sygiel; Marc Pageau; Marie Kaziunas; Chace Baptista, the founder/co-director of Young Voices and yours sincerely Tino Chow.

It was an amazing experience! I knew it was going to be fun and never so much fun, and on top of that it feels really good to have worked along side with other young people who believes in the sames things I do and is as passionate or even more passionate about help others. And Young Voices have a new website!

The big idea is for us to work with a couple more non-profits by assembling a different team each time, so that we can find a formula that can be scaled and done anywhere in the world. Follow us on Facebook.

Today, we announced the theme for this month and the direction for the rest of the year – “Action speaks louder than words”

As a gathering of great minds, our goal has always been is to turn our brilliant conversations into positive action. Our goal for the rest of 2010 at Monthly Design Review is work towards an action oriented event to cap off the year.

Visit us and RSVP to our next get together

Here is an interesting take on organization, hiding your valuables and everything else in plain sight. If you are as forgetful as I am, you might not remember where your secret compartment for you car keys are when you leave the house… imagine how frustrated that might be. In any case, this is a cool project and the video is full of little surprises.

Secret Stash from yiting cheng on Vimeo.

Every month, we mix it up a little and try new things, this month, we got people to participate not by simply speaking to one another, but to use their hands to communicate through drawing and writing. (Thats what we do as artists and designers)

Next month’s meeting will be on July 15, join us then.

Kahn’s Exeter Short Film from Alex Roman on Vimeo.