GALLERY 2012

Description of campaign/project

The International Non Consumptive Currency, or INCC, is a speculative jewellery-based carbon-credit micro-trading system. INCC is a cross-disciplinary project that aims to enable autonomy, stigmatize unsustainable habits, and reward non-consumptive practices within the current paradigms of society, industry, and politics. As this project is speculative—critical design, it's been called—its intention is to make viewers consider what is valued in our society. Through utilizing already extant conventions and values in our society, INCC subverts these financial and social practices to catalyze social change and a re-ordering of principles.

The project is camouflaged as a magazine spread from Bloomberg Businessweek: an article on the product on the verso page, with a full page jewellery ad on the other. This kind of covert approach—directly reappropriating corporate design aesthetics—is just one method in which graphic design holds power. Everything in the world is at our disposal, ready to be reappropriated.
This assumed basis within the established value system allows for the fictional aspect of INCC to take precedence. A fictional project without a basis in formal reality allows for each individual viewer to imagine the scenario and its ramifications themselves, instead of having a prescribed outcome rammed down our throats.

To be honest, I don't think there are any concrete benefits to society because of INCC. It would be near impossible to put this concept into practice, but that isn't the point. The point is to dream. Perhaps through dreaming, we can build another reality.

Quite practically: through working on this project, I was introduced to Rhinoceros 3D, and found thinking in three dimensions easier than I expected. I also received the external gratification of winning the Special Juror's Prize at the 2012 Sustainability Awards in Toronto, Canada.