Impact DesignHub is a place where design has a purpose. IDH is dedicated to the diverse dialogue on art and design across cultures as well as passionate about building partnerships with people around the world. We will work with non-profit organizations to promote design advocacy, social responsibility, and social awareness around issues of culture, race, gender, poverty, homelessness, and the injustices of society’s oppressors. We work with community partners to build their social capital as well as contributing to their social change through branding and visual communication products.

The IDH Program embeds top cross disciplinary university students for one full 15-week academic term to work on high-level projects with community partners. Young designers are challenged to expand their comprehension of design problem solving when executing socially-minded work through community-based projects with non-profit organizations, Design teams use a design thinking methodology for visual communication solutions: identifying problems, design research, ideation, and implementation.

Paula DiMarco, Ph.D.
Creative Director

As the Creative Director of CSUN Impact DesignHub, my experience spands 30 years in the commercial and non-profit sectors. My role as the creative director for IDH is to guide projects from beginning to fruition and to facilitate a collaborative experince with the designers and organizations using a cooperative human centered design process.

Purpose.
Causes.
Change.
Partnerships.
Community.
Designers.
Impact Makers.
Citizens.
Humans.

As a cooperative design studio, Impact DesignHub welcome collaboration with faculty, professionals and community activists. The following people have been valuable to our past and future partnerships:

Vesna Petrovic [VESNA DE3IGN]
José Luis Benavides [Professor CSUN Journalism]
John Ignatczyk [Chief at LAFD]
Rico Gross [Captain II at LAFD]
Domenica Castillo [Curator & Director of the Museum of Social Justice]