Natalie Diffloth

design

natalie — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:49:41 +0000

The most effective design solutions are those that inspire, that open doors, and that themselves create a range of new opportunities.

multimedia

natalie — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:16:43 +0000

Telling stories through texture, color, typography, and sense of place.

frauenstärken

natalie — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:35:47 +0000

In Freiburg, Germany, women come together at FrauenStärken, with gatherings taking place weekly at a number of locations across the city. The group’s goal is to start conversations, brainstorm ideas and create local networks — a central focus being on personal and professional development. The nationalities of the participants range widely, including Turkish, Indonesian, Guatemalan, Ukrainian, Croatian, Moroccan, Romanian, Afghan, French and German, among others. Funding comes from a variety of sources, the city of Freiburg itself being a sponsor. At one regular gathering point, a project formed to establish a sewing cooperative. These postcards were created with the aim of promoting the organization’s work and demonstrating the pride and engagement of the group’s members. I photographed the project participants and designed the postcards. I also established a website for the group as a whole, one that allows the different meeting points to more effectively share their local projects and promote their activities to a wider audience. See frauenstaerken.com.

solidaile website

natalie — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 17:30:30 +0000

I designed this trilingual (French-Spanish-English) website for Solidaile, a French NGO working to support education and training programs in Peru. The site was created with the idea of incorporating a responsive design structure — one that accommodates viewing on devices of different sizes, ranging from smart phones to large monitors. Online at solidaile.org

water bottles in cambodia

natalie — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 13:04:33 +0000

During my most recent trip to Cambodia, in November 2011, I became captivated by the tremendous increase in the sale of plastic water bottles and by the proliferation of the unique Cambodian-style labeling displayed on their sides.

Walking through the town of Siem Reap, whether along a main street or on an unpaved side way, these water bottles have achieved a ubiquitous presence in the visual landscape: stacked up in the sun by roadside stands advertising rice dishes and cheap cigarettes; sold in upscale, air-conditioned markets geared toward tourists; discarded in trash heaps that flow slowly down river; collected by children wielding wheelbarrows through the center of town at night; used as flower vases in religious offerings; or tossed aside by tourists on the grounds of the world-famous temple complex and UNESCO World Heritage site, Angkor Wat.

Taking a closer look at the labels themselves reveals further complexity to their presence. Although one finds the predictable multinational brands such as Dasani (produced by Coca-Cola) and Aquafina (produced by Pepsi), there are also a multitude of local/regional actors and producers who have entered the fray with their own “Cambodian” water products. Water bottles with Angkor-related names such as “Angkor Fresh Water”, “Bayon”, “Baray Mebonn” and “Preah Vihear” are to be found in abundance, but so are ones with monikers that aim for a more explicit Western connection, such as “Eurotech”, “Cute”, “Steve” and “Maxy Life (‘The Trusted Brand’)”.

In both English and Khmer, promotional messaging displayed on the bottles frequently brands and defines the product in terms of its technological (and therefore supposed health) benefits: “purified by reverse osmosis”, “UV and ozone treated”, “produced by world qualified technology”, “enhanced by Japanese technology” and other similar messages commonly appear on labels. In this, these water bottles represent a trend toward pathologization of non-bottled water, (filtered or otherwise), as well as a medicalization of water as such (“High quality is your health”, reads one).

Herein, however, lies a considerable irony, because in fact the majority of bottled water companies in Cambodia have failed to meet minimum production quality standards. In 2008, fewer than 20% of the 130 bottled water companies were found to be in accordance with standards established by the Cambodian Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy. Significantly, this is in the context of a bottled water industry booming in Cambodia. In 2010 alone, for instance, sales of the Dasani brand reached $40 to $50 million USD, an increase of nearly 30% from the previous year. In short, bottled water is big business. And, it should be added, this makes the industry a political player — one seeking to secure control of and/or rights to local water resources as well as striving to ensure conditions for its own future growth.

All of which brings us full circle. The water bottle in Cambodia is not merely a water bottle. It is, simultaneously, an aspect of material culture, the expression of a marketing strategy, a health hazard, a health benefit, an environmental pollutant, an expression of cultural values, a financial windfall, a point of political conflict, and an object that has moved across cultures, assuming different meanings in the process. Moreover, its content, the water, enters our bodies and becomes a physical part of us when we drink it.

In an upscale, tourist-oriented supermarket, Siem Reap

Used as a vase in a temple offering at Ta Prohm

Water bottles being sold near a tourist bar, Siem Reap

Water bottle discarded by a tourist at the Bayon temple

Water bottles being sold on the street, Siem Reap

WATER BOTTLE LABELS

Mouse over the images to view caption and source information. To enlarge, click the last icon on the right. I collected most of these labels in Cambodia. A few at the end of the slide show are from Laos and Vietnam (indicated).

NATALIE DIFFLOTH: STRATEGY, DESIGN, PHOTOGRAPHY, MULTIMEDIA

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pepy cambodia

natalie — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:44:02 +0000

PEPY — “Promoting Education, emPowering Youth” — aids rural communities in Cambodia to improve standards of living, with a focus on increased access to quality education. I have been working with the organization on a consulting basis since 2008, especially in helping them focus their visual branding strategy. Most recently, I assisted PEPY in the process of designing a new logo. PEPY does wonderful work and is especially noteworthy for its open discussion and organizational transparency. See PEPY online at pepycambodia.org.

clean water praxis in cambodia

natalie — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:57:54 +0000

The Lake Clinic (TLC) is a project dedicated to bringing basic health care, as well as disease surveillance and proper medical referrals to a severely isolated and underserved region of Cambodia — the Tonle Sap. Across this freshwater lake, Southeast Asia’s largest, fishing communities live in floating villages, many as far as six to eight hours away from land by boat. I joined TLC’s medical boat in November 2011. A significant public health challenge lies in addressing water hygiene. Many residents both drink and bathe in sewage-contaminated water, as the extensive growth of water hyacinths across the Lake, especially near floating communities, obstructs extensive water circulation. In practical terms, sanitary facilities are non-existent. An important challenge therefore becomes how to inform sanitary praxis — especially with respect not just to having, but to using, clean water filters. Availability of the filters is not an overwhelming issue, as they are distributed inexpensively by area NGOs, but adoption is a hurdle. The Lake is the community’s lifeblood; people do not associate disease with its water. And yet the most common ailments reported to the Clinic include worms, dysintery, skin and urinary tract infections, jaundice and fever — from a biomedicine standpoint, all strongly related to hygiene. In this context, I conceptualized, and subsequently designed and illustrated, the water hygiene poster shown below. Created with feedback from TLC in Cambodia, the idea with this poster is for TLC staff to be able to make use of it as a tool for discussion during the doctors’ Lake rounds. This poster project continues to be in development, with feedback from the field still coming in. Click the poster image to enlarge. The photos below are from one of TLC’s Lake visits, with a makeshift medical clinic set up on the floor of a floating school. For more information about The Lake Clinic, see lakeclinic.org.

Click to enlarge poster

loud / quiet / rantepao

natalie — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 07:29:19 +0000

A day in the life in the town of Rantepao, located in the Tana Toraja region of Sulawesi, Indonesia. August 2011.

tana toraja

natalie — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:45:02 +0000

Funeral ceremony near the town of Rantepao, located in the Tana Toraja region of Sulawesi, Indonesia. August 2011.

community supported film website

natalie — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:38:54 +0000

Community Supported Film is a nonprofit organization that provides training in non-fiction filmmaking to storytellers from poor and developing communities. The organization works primarily in Afghanistan. For CSFilm, I completed an end-to-end website redesign, including site strategy, design concept and execution. Online at csfilm.org

workshop on social media strategies for promoting public health

natalie — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:26:49 +0000

Rather than being used primarily for voice calls, mobile phones in Indonesia are actually most commonly employed to access the internet — with social media (1), and Facebook in particular (2), being Indonesian’s most popular online destination. This phenomenon, in combination with Indonesia’s exceptionally high mobile phone penetration rate, has led social media to play a central role in everyday personal and group communication. Thus, opportunities abound for using online social networks to communicate more than just private messages. In July 2011, I was invited to join the Indonesian-German Health Education Partnership (a DAAD-funded project) for their Summer School on Mother and Child Health in Makassar, on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. For the 75+ participants, mostly Indonesian and a few European, I conducted a presentation and hands-on workshop with the topic: “Strategies for Using Social Media to Disseminate Public Health Information”. Program details online at ighep.com. 1. Nielsen 2011; 2. AppAppeal 2011

for just one euro

natalie — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:51:45 +0000

On September 24 and 25, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI came to the city of Freiburg, Germany, population 220,000. That weekend, over 100,000 pilgrims arrived to pay him a visit. Total costs to the city and its citizens, both Catholic and non-Catholic, topped 25+ million euros, with the city of Freiburg donating 11 million from its budget and the Catholic church contributing an additional 14+ million. The video below, filmed on September 24th near Freiburg’s Rathaus (City Hall), focuses its attention away from the direct path of the Pope, toward his visitors, to explore symbols valued and commodification of religious icons. In particular, it chronicles the efforts of a local kindergarten to raise funds by offering pilgrims the chance to have their photos taken beside a life-sized, color cardboard image of the Pope.

your portrait on a communion wafer

natalie — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:28:07 +0000

Video transcript displayed in English below…

In September 2011, in honor of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Freiburg, Germany, political artist Jan Sosein Carl seized the opportunity to add his own distinctive voice to the public discourse, creatively challenging the day’s visitors to think more critically about separation of church and state. Also known as the Bundeskünstler, (a pun on the German word “Bundeskanzler”, or “federal chancellor”), Jan Sosein Carl located a spot on Freiburg’s City Hall plaza, then sat on the ground with a simple sign and a few pens. To those who passed by, he offered to sketch small, line-drawn caricatures onto common baking wafers — ones that most, at a quick glance, might identify as communion wafers. However, his particular wafers were clearly store-bought (as evidenced by their packaging) and had not been blessed by a priest, a fact which formally precluded their possession of religious significance, at least in the official sense. As onlookers curiously inquired and made requests for the free drawings, the artist engaged them in conversation, both serious and humorous, and subtly encouraged a challenging of cultural and political norms. In this way, the artist’s performance highlighted the tensions involved in distinguishing sacred object from common artifact — tacitly questioning the legitimacy of what may be considered “reverent” versus “irreverent”. This video follows the artist and his performance on that day, September 24, 2011, and attempts to capture the flavor of this cultural moment.

Transcript:

00:33 — Jan Sosein Carl: Hello. Woman: Could I have one? JSC: Of course. Big, small, medium — what is your preference? Woman: (speaking off to the side) A small one. JSC: (repeats) A small one. A quite small one. JSC: Would you like a portrait of yourself? I could also draw the Pope. Woman: The Pope. JSC: Good, then we’ll do the Pope. JSC: Very fine. I’m going to draw the Pope with a shopping bag.

01:15 — JSC: By the way, just so we don’t misunderstand each other, the term “host” on this sign here (pointing toward the ground) is intended as a parody. I would never ever draw on sacred pieces of bread.

01:32 — JSC: (handing woman his artist card) So you know from whom this comes… Woman: Thank you. JSC: My name is Jan. I am the Bundeskünstler of this republic. (Ed. note: “Bundeskünstler” is an invented term, which translated literally means “federal artist”; however, the artist’s adoption of it is also a satiric pun on the word “Bundeskanzler”, or “Federal Chancellor”, a position currently held by Chancellor Angela Merkel.)

01:45 — Another woman: (voice in background, reading aloud the sign on the ground) “Your portrait on a communion wafer.” JSC: (speaking to the woman) Would you perhaps also like to have a portrait from me? Woman: What does it cost? JSC: (Hesitating) Well now you are falling into capitalistic thinking. Woman: Oh? JSC: I am doing this as a generous Christian.

02:09 — JSC: (greeting a group of boys) So, guys…! One of the boys: Why do you draw on your knee like that? JSC: Because my knee is equipped with a very concentrated intellect. Boy: (skeptical) Okay… JSC: (laughing) No, it’s just very comfortable! That’s all. But I could tell you some really good stories! Group of boys: (laughing) One of the boys: Could you maybe draw an altar boy? JSC: Well, now you have to help me… What do altar boys look like? One of the boys: Umm, well, like us, but they wear a skirt. (laughing) Another of the boys: They are of different heights, and… JSC: Yes, of course, but that’s the same with all people. There are short altar boys and tall altar boys. Another of the boys: (while watching the drawing of an altar boy) Since when do altar boys have hair? JSC: Altar boys have hair. Of course altar boys have hair!

03:10 — JSC: Is it permitted to draw an altar boy with a halo? Majority of boys respond: No, no. One of the boys: Yes. (group laughing)

03:20 — Another of the boys: Oh, and then they wear one of those belt things. JSC: Oh yeah, sometimes altar boys have a belt. One of the boys: Exactly, a type of belt. JSC: And what about a tiara? One of the boys: No idea… One of the boys: May one request a special design? JSC: Yes, of course. Another of the boys: And then you have to do another one after that. (laughing)

03:40 — Adult speaking in the background: What led you to do something like this? JSC: I am an artist.

03:45 — The adult supervisor of the altar boys arrives running, and speaks in a sharp tone: So, all of you, come back here. We are leaving — right now. One of the boys: (reaching out to request the drawing be given to him) Okay. JSC: (objecting) But I’m not done… Adult supervisor: Yeah, well, unfortunately, we need to move on. Very unfortunately.

03:58 — JSC: (speaking to the boy who is waiting for his drawing) You can’t just allow yourself get rushed like that, huh? Boy: Okay. JSC: (handing the boy the finished drawing) There you go! Boy: Thank you. JSC: Bye!

your portrait on a communion wafer

natalie — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:28:00 +0000

View video with transcription of conversation into English

pediatric rheumatology website

natalie — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 17:47:33 +0000

Website design and concept for the Working Group for Pediatric Rheumatology, South Baden, Germany. Online at kinder-rheuma.org