Six Swedish design students are taking their work on the road: over 15 weeks, they’re visiting 15 different countries, tackling a new problem in each location in a rapid-fire workshop. They take on a project, fly in, work for the weekend, deliver a solution, and then fly to the next location.
The Pop-Up Agency originally started because the students wanted to take on side projects, but only had weekends free. Once it was time for them to take internships, rather than settling down with one company for a semester, the students decided to keep their short-term projects going—around the world. They’ll be traveling until June, working with startups and other companies offering free consulting in exchange for tickets and a place to stay.
They’re not the first traveling designers. Daniel Cooper, who calls himself a “nomadic designer,” started a similar project as he was about to graduate from an art school in London. Another Swedish design student, Erik Olevsson, has been driving his “Designbuss” all over, picking up design gigs along the way. As The Pop-Up Agency founders say:
This generation has a need for pop-up museums, pop-up shops and pop-up events. We’ve watched this trend and decided to take it to the next level.
Design strategy firms often spend much of their time on the road with clients anyway. Who needs an office?
This post is part of the GOOD community’s 50 Building Blocks of Citizenship—weekly steps to being an active, engaged global citizen. This week: Take An Alternate Route. Follow along and join the conversation at good.is/citizenship and on Twitter at #goodcitizen.
Image courtesy of The Pop-Up Agency
