Unit Title: How might stickers help a good cause?

Key Concept: Communication

Related Concept: Markets and trends; Innovations
Global Context: Personal and cultural expression
Statement of Inquiry: The products we own communicate a lot about our beliefs and
values.
Design Situation: Imagine that your school has banned bake sales. They are fine with you
raising money for a charity or non-profit organization, but the product sold must be linked to
the organization's cause. You have decided to make stickers to raise awareness and money for
a charity or non-profit you are passionate about.
For this sticker project, you will have to collaborate with other designers (classmates) to
make a set of stickers to sell. Each student in a team will be tasked with creating one or two
stickers to make up a sticker set. You'll have to work together to make sure the stickers are
clearly part of the same series.
Criterion A: Inquiring and analysing
Strand i: Explain and justify the need for a solution to a problem for a specified client/target
audience.
Activity: UN Global Goals
ATL: Thinking Skills
Critical-thinking Skills: Gather and organize
relevant information to formulate an argument.
The UN Global Goals, shown in Figure, cover
big, broad topics that we should be focusing on
to improve the world. These goals might help
you to select a cause that you are interested in
raising money for.
Pick one of the UN Global Goals and use it to
brainstorm issues or causes you want to
research. Remember that the goals are broad, so
you might want to break it down into smaller parts.
On the UN Global Goals website - www.globalgoals.org - you can click on a goal and see
how it is broken down into separate targets. An example of this is UN Global Goal 10,
reduced inequalities. It is broken down into ten smaller targets, for example 10.3: 'Ensure
equal opportunities and end discrimination.' You can break these down further, however; for
example, you might then think about discrimination due to race, gender, religious beliefs or
sexual orientation.
Once you have generated some different ideas, pick out one you will develop further
and explain why.
ACTIVITY: Justifying your final selection
ATL: Thinking Skills
Critical-thinking skills: Gather and organize relevant information to formulate an argument

Now that you have thought about the cause (problem) you care about, research online to find
facts about this issue that will help you to justify why you need to make a product to solve
this problem. You will then need to find a charity or non-profit and justify why this is the best
organization to raise money for.
Strand ii: identify and prioritize the primary and secondary research needed to develop a
solution to the problem.
Activity: Making a survey
ATL: Social Skills
Collaboration Skills: Listen actively to other perspectives and ideas
Now that you have listed the things you need and want to know, you should turn these into
survey questions. There are different types of questions that you can use.
Remember, you don't just do a survey for the sake of it - you need to use the information to
help you develop your ideas. The more your product is informed by research, the greater your
of success. chance
There are many free survey tools online, including Google Forms and Survey Monkey. By
creating your form digitally, you will be able to analyse the data quickly and even make
graphs to show the answers.
Once you have designed your survey, ask your teacher or another classmate to check it over
to make sure that you are using the right question types. When you are happy with it, you
should send it out. If everyone in your class is creating a survey, and they are all emailed at
the same time, you are unlikely to get many replies, so consider doing the following:
 have a laptop set up during break/lunch and invite people to fill in the form.
 ask for the form (and your classmates' forms) to be added to a newsletter or to be
completed in homeroom.
 ask your design teacher to have other design classes fill in the form.
 put up posters with a link or a QR code to the form.
Strand iii: analyse a range of existing products that inspire a solution to the problem.
Activity: Analysing existing stickers
ATL: Research Skills
Information literacy skills: Collect and analyse data to identify solutions and make
informed decisions
It's now time to analyse some existing stickers. You can use some of the stickers shown in
Figure, find your own, or even analyse your
classmates' stickers. In this activity you will
be analysing the different design elements of
the stickers, including colour, lines, shapes,
texture, space and style. You may also use a
different method of analysis, for example
thinking about who the stickers would appeal
to, and what they might say about the user's
beliefs and values.
Colour: what do you notice about the colours? Are they bright/soft/contrasting? Are they
solid blocks of colour? Do the colours symbolize anything?
Lines: are the lines thick or thin? Are they coloured or all black? Are they straight or curved?
Are the lines soft or angular?
Shapes: are the shapes geometric or organic? Do they look realistic or are they exaggerated?
Is the sticker busy or simplistic?
Texture: do the stickers only have block colours or do they give an illusion of texture? Are
there any shadows?
Space: is there any blank space? Is there a background or is the sticker shaped around the
object? How are items positioned in the space?
Style: how would you describe the style? Does it remind you of any other graphics you have
seen before? Does the illustration look realistic or stylized?

Sticker Colour Lines Shapes Texture Space Style

Sticker 1 Bright and Thin, Geometric
contrasting colored shapes
colors lines
Sticker 2
Sticker 3
Sticker 4
Sticker 5
Strand iv: develop a detailed design brief which summarizes the analysis of relevant
research.
GENERATE-SORT- CONNECT-ELABORATE
As a team you have probably generated many ideas through analysing other stickers,
surveying students in your school and doing the Colour- Symbol-Image activity. Now it is
time to start talking about your own ideas so that you can come up with a clear direction.
 Generate a list of ideas and initial thoughts that come to mind when you think about
your stickers.
 Sort your ideas according to how central or tangential they are. Place central ideas
near the centre and more tangential ideas towards the outside of the page.
 Link your ideas by drawing connecting lines between ideas that have something in
common. Write a short sentence to explain how the ideas are connected.
 Elaborate on any of the ideas/thoughts you have written so far by adding new ideas
that expand, extend or add to your initial ideas.
After noticing the themes and seeing the key ideas emerging, you should be able to write your
design brief. Remember, a design brief is a paragraph summarizing your research and saying
what you are going to make. Try to include the content of your stickers and the style that
you plan to use.