Greater Good Magazine

Greater Good Magazine highlights ground breaking scientific research into the roots of compassion and altruism. It fuses this science with inspiring stories of compassion in action, providing a bridge between social scientists and parents, educators, community leaders, and policy makers.

From its inaugural issue in 2004, Greater Good set out to publish pioneering research on compassion, philantropy, and altruism to a wide audience. The topics that were being explored were of interest to a very diverse audience that included social workers, educators, psychologists and lots of every day folks in addition to the academic community that generally had acess to this type of research through scholarly publications.

From a design perspective this meant taking academic content out of the traditional journal format and creating a full color magazine that would prove to be appealing to a diverse audience. In order to have a successful magazine we would need lots of cutting edge content that was delivered in a well designed, accessible and dynamic format, using lots of originally commissioned photography and illustration that was in line with the the optimistic yet critical and scholarly tone of the magazine. The first steps were to research and discuss an array of existing publications with the client in order to assess the field and make sure we designed a product that would use best-practices in design, publishing and green printing standards.

Over the next four years, Greater Good came to be recognized as a trailblazing, leading publication in its field, known for all-around excellence, and nominated for several awards including a Maggie in 2008 as well as Best New Publication and Best Social/Cultural Coverage by UTNE's Best of the Independent Press Awards in 2007and 2009 respectively.

Marguerite Casey Foundation

The Marguerite Casey Foundation is an independent grant making foundation dedicated to helping low-income families strengthen their voice. The foundation seeks to build a more just and equitable society by nurturing a movement of low-wage families that engages communities across the United States and forwards an agenda that puts families first. The foundation makes grants to cornerstone community organizations working in advocacy and organizing, leadership development, public policy change, and cross-sector collaboration.

For its 2006 annual report, the foundation was looking for innovative ways of representing the diversity of their constituency. They asked iarte to come up with a concept that did this without using the classic approach of using lots of photos of people from varied ethnicities in a collage of some sort. The challenge was to convey the ideas of distinct peoples working together to form a strong network of communities. During the research phase of this project we looked at ways that cultural diversity could be conveyed through materials. This led to the chosen strategy of exploring these connections through the use of textiles representing different cultures interwoven into a quilt. We also used the individual textiles to interact with a seond element that depcted an aereal view of a community shaped like a tree, with its roots firmly planted in the quilt design.

A Gathering of Hearts with the Dalai Lama

A gathering of hearts text goes here... highlights ground breaking scientific research into the roots of compassion and altruism. It fuses this science with inspiring stories of compassion in action, providing a bridge between social scientists and parents, educators, community leaders, and policy makers.