Living in hot New Orleans has made Candy appreciate the simple kindness of tree shade like never before. The city lost over 100,000 trees after Hurricane Katrina, and many neighborhoods roast in the sun. To promote tree planting in her neighborhood, she collaborated with local nonprofit Marigny Green to create the Sexy Trees of the Marigny 2011 Calendar. Marveling at the sexiness of a Live Oak tree (now featured for the month July), she photographed local trees and paired them with maps and helpful tree facts to promote Marigny Green’s great work.

Marigny Green is a neighborhood volunteer committee of the Faubourg Marigny Improvement Association. They promote sustainable living through local initiatives on tree planting, biking, energy-efficient lighting, and recycling. They’ve planted over 150 trees that are now helping cool temperatures, temper heavy rains, renew our air supply, and make the neighborhood beautiful. By purchasing this calendar for $15 you’ll help Marigny Green provide a healthier urban canopy of trees in New Orleans and make us crumple a little less upon walking outside in July.

2010, White wire-o binding, 100# white gloss stock, 11″ x 17″ (open).

“Candy Chang makes environmentalism organizationally erotic.” – NOLA Defender

New Orleans. Someone’s blowing a trumpet on one corner, someone’s building a mystery space machine on the other, and across the street by a boarded-up building someone’s painting their shotgun house pink and green. NOLA lets you be you. Everyone says hello like you’re old friends, even if you just showed up. Just being here means something. The Marigny and Bywater feel like they were drawn by a five-year-old, in the very best way. Sit on your porch for an hour and you’ll make five new friends and hug the neighborhood cat. Mr. Okra drives by in his fruit truck and we run. A girl on a bike staples a flyer to a pole. I buy my wine at the same place my neighbor is doing his laundry. Friends walk three blocks to get home. A neighborhood association board member shows me a scrap book of every new tree planted. Ask people why they live here and they get emotional. It’s because there was an instant connection. It’s because there’s something about this city. It’s good to be here.

2010 and beyond, 25″ x 10″, Stencils and temporary spray chalk on sidewalk.

The Bargain Center flea market

Bacchanal bar /restaurant / magical big-ass garden with live jazz

Cake Cafe

The Iron Rail anarchist bookstore / lending library / record store

St. Claude Avenue

Schiro’s Cafe and Community Bar restaurant / laundromat / liquor & cookies store

Mardi Gras Zone costume shop / grocery store

The Orange Couch Cafe

When Poster Offensive invited Candy to design a poster on any political issue, she thought about a sad and simple fact: one out of six people in the world are hungry. Forget about learning or playing or loving. One out of six people aren’t sure there will be enough food to last for the week. Food insecurity now affects a record 1.02 billion people, or one sixth of the world, and the rate has spiked over the past two years because of the economic crisis and high food prices. One in six Americans don’t have enough food, and 65 percent of all chronically hungry people in the world live in just seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia. There are a lot of causes: poverty, unemployment, inadequate minimum wage, unexpected expenses, lack of financial security options, bad governance, lack of democracy, war, climate change, natural disasters, personal disasters, land degradation, lack of agricultural infrastructure. Learn more here: UN World Food Programme, Share the World’s Resources, Hungry in America, Feeding America, Stop the Hunger.

Exhibited Oct-Nov 2010 at the Galley in Minneapolis. Purchase a heavy stock print at various sizes.

Fact sources: UN News Centre, WFP, Washington Post, USDA, NPR

Poster Offensive show (photo by Poster Offensive, more here)

From 2009 to 2010 Candy worked at Nokia, where she was a design specialist in their headquarters in Helsinki. For a year and a half she worked with a small design team on the topic of mobile transactions. She conducted ethnographic field research and translated people’s needs and behaviors into proposed services and business models. It was meaningful work and she met many people in many places who made her think differently. She also worked closely with a group of mahtava people including John Evans, Michiel Terlouw, Jan Chipchase, Josephine Gianni, Johan Frössén, Phil Lindberg, Adam Greenfield, and Michael Davis-Burchat, and original team Felice Mancino, Andreea Chelaru, Harri Wikberg, and Duncan Lamb. A bunch of down-to-earth, hilarious, and talented people all sitting at the same cafeteria table. She had to follow her heart into artier territory, but her time at Nokia made her a better person.

It was one of the first words I learned in Finland: mahtava. Finnish for “awesome”. It worked itself into my daily vocabulary because it does things that “awesome” never can, letting you exhale and simmer on the awesomeness of it all: MAH-ta-vaaaaaa. My year and a half living in Helsinki were mahtava in large part to the friends I made at Nokia and beyond, a global crew from Finland, Italy, Holland, Chile, India, Romania, Ireland, Brazil, Sweden, Australia, Spain, Germany, Singapore, Norway, Canada, the UK, the US, and beyond, who made me feel like I belonged the moment I touched down. Like Mr. Roger’s neighborhood, we all lived within blocks of each other and for that reason and others we hung out with an intensity I have only experienced at camp. Many of us worked in the same building. All of us ate and drank at the same places. And most of us danced our hearts out until nothing mattered besides friends, rhythm, and avoiding the broken glass.

By coincidence and for all positive reasons, five of us left Helsinki at the same time. While packing up my apartment I found a can of temporary spray chalk in the back of my closet. I cut out a stencil while stuffing things into suitcases, and after friends came over for one last hurrah and we laughed and played and they adopted my chairs and lamps and we slow-danced and hugged, I crept out into the night and left one last message to them in front of their doors and streets and their favorite cafes, something they would see only after I was up in the clouds. There are few feelings greater than leaving a love note in public space, a note that all people will enjoy but certain ones will enjoy even more. Helsinki, you make me feel so mahtava! We were all together at this moment in time in our lives and it was great.

Uudenmaankatu

Gran Delicato Cafe, Kalevankatu

Bulevardi

Thanks to good neighbors in NYC and Helsinki, Candy shared a corkscrew, a ladder, a large pot, chairs, a bike, an air pump, wi-fi, design books, a drill, an iron, professional studio lights, an inflatable bed, wine, and food. And this was only amongst a few neighbors because she rarely bumped into most and had no way to break the ice. In a time where SMS has made phone calls seem invasive, a door knock feels nearly violating. Her neighbors could be in their pajamas, eating dinner, fresh out of the shower, or making out, and suddenly she’s banging on their door…

So when the good people of GOOD Magazine invited her to contribute to their Neighborhoods issue, she wondered if she could take advantage of the format and make something that could be torn out of the magazine and used as a tool. The Neighbor Doorknob Hanger is a simple, double-sided sign that provides a friendly platform for residents in dense quarters to offer and request things at everyone’s convenience. One side says “Please Disturb” and makes space for you to list offerings and choose how you prefer to be contacted – a knock at specific times that are good for you, by phone, or by email. The other side of the doorknob hanger says “Can I borrow?” and provides the same format for requesting things and resources. Think of it as an invitation, a validated request, or a low-tech status update for your door, so we can share more resources without interrupting each other at a bad time!

2010, 3.5″ x 9″, Printed on fine card stock in GOOD Magazine April 2010 issue. If you missed the issue, you can print your own at home with these fine pdf files of side 1 and side 2.

3″ x 4″ die-cut cards are printed on heavy 12pt coated cover stock. Units are individually shrink-wrapped. The word on the street: BLDG BLOG. Boingboing, Gothamist, FastCompany, Public Workshop

Vendor Power! translates the most commonly violated rules into accessible diagrams. It also illustrates vendors’ rights and includes text in English, Bengali, Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish. The guide also serves as an educational/advocacy tool and includes a poster full of fun facts on the history and challenges of NYC street vending, personal vendor stories, and policy reform recommendations (lift license caps, increase street access, reduce the fines, and reform administration & enforcement). Thousands of copies were distributed to street vendors for free, and the guide is available for $6 or as a free downloadable PDF on CUP’s Making Policy Public site. Candy designed and illustrated the guide (read her article about the process on the Urban Omnibus). Hang the poster up and show your love for street vendors too! Featured in the 2010 National Design Triennial by the Smithsonian, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

Good design not only makes the city easier to use, but it’s what will determine if the city functions at all. For the first time in history, more people live in cities than rural areas, and over two-thirds of the world will live in cities by 2050. In order to make that work, we need to improve our infrastructure, and that includes information design. Communication tools are just as important of an infrastructure system as roads, electricity, and sewer drains. Every day citizens are trying to navigate the system as an apartment renter, or a taxpayer, or a small business starter, or a public transportation user – And with good information design that experience can be engaging – and even fun!

“Chang’s Vendor Power! and Tenant Flash Cards projects offer two fantastic examples of how graphic design can be put to use in clarifying everyday, seemingly uninteresting legal situations… The possibilities are bewilderingly wide-ranging.” —BLDGBLOG

2009, 32″ x 22″ fold-out poster, heavy 80 lb. Lynx Brightwhite Smooth matte paper stock. New York, NY. Produced by the Center for Urban Pedagogy.

Above photos by Prudence Katze and the Center for Urban Pedagogy

The team: Sean Basinski, Rosten Woo, John Mangin, and Candy Chang

Sean shows us tickets from street vendors – mostly for parking their cart too far from the curb, parking on restricted streets, parking too close to a storefront, and not “conspicuously” wearing their license

Typical page from current regulation book. Snap!

Hanging out with street vendors like Munnu to understand their experiences

Meeting with street vendors to get feedback on drafts of the guide

Four photos above by CUP from the distribution event

An interesting quote Sean recently found from 1905:

“I think it would be a great advantage to all the peddlers to have a translated copy of the license issued. As it is, some of the Italians cannot understand the regulations of the road and the ordinances of the City. If it were printed in English…in Yiddish…in Greek, Italian and Syrian for the others it would prove to be a great aid to them.”
- Rev. Bernardino Polizzo, 1905, during a hearing on the pushcart menace

2008, Post-it notes and storefront window, 54″ x 54″. Brooklyn, NY. Commissioned by Windows Brooklyn. Installation assistance by Kay Cheng. Later exhibited at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, 2009.

Read about the process on the Urban Omnibus!

More images on Flickr

Results:

All Post-it notes on final day.

Post-it notes whittled down to ones with responses (half of total).

After the week-long installation it was a pleasant surprise that 1) nearly all the Post-it notes stayed in tact after multiple rain storms and 2) people responded! 151 notes out of 300 were filled out. What a fun and easy way to collect neighborhood info… The results are tallied below:

Nearly half of responses came from people living in their apartment for 2 years or less – a reflection of the temporary-ness of many New Yorkers/renters? The winner of Cheapest Apartment goes to someone living in a studio in Carroll Gardens for 43 years that costs $146/month (!) And the Most Expensive goes to someone in a 4-br in Cobble Hill for 4 years that costs $3,720/month. Some other interesting responses about monthly rents:

3 br in Red Hook for 13 yrs – $200
1-br in Brooklyn Heights for 1 yr – $3315
1-br in Jersey City for 3 yrs – $1000 (“w/ a backyard bitches!”)
3-br loft in Chelsea for 30 yrs – $1095
1-br in Cobble Hill for 11 yrs – $893.45
1-br in Carroll Gardens for 21 yrs – $350
2-br in Clinton Hill for 14 yrs – $700
2-br in Williamsburg for 10 yrs – $800
2-br in Carroll Gardens for 55 yrs – $350
2-br in Bethlehem, PA (the only non-NYC-area response) for 1 wk – $730

52 responses came from people living in 1-br apartments in Carroll Gardens. Below are the range of costs depending on the number of years people have lived in their apartment:

A few lifers are getting some good deals, but it seems like some costs have caught up with time. Candt printed “cost(s)” on the notes to invite input from both renters and owners, but the responses were mostly from renters. Now she sees that she still botched the wording – most Brooklynites buy complete brownstones/houses rather than apartments. The only owners who entered info were people who she met while tending to the project – one guy has lived in a two-apartment house in Carroll Gardens for 30 years and it cost him only $125,000 (it’s worth $3 million now). He also happened to know Candy’s old landlords around the corner and said their family was “trouble”. And a woman named Deborah bought three homes in Bed Stuy from 1988-2003 and never paid more than $250,000. They put her two sons through college and will allow her to retire early. “Like they say,” she said, “they’re not making any more of it. Get yourself some real estate!”

These maps plot prisoners and their costs back to their original homes and suggest a new way of looking at community investment and how these same criminal-justice dollars can be spent in better ways. More than 2 million people are in jails and prisons in the U.S., and Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In many places the concentration is so dense that the government spends over a million dollars per year to imprison residents of a single city block. At the same time, communities are continuously struggling to get funding and support for civic services like youth programs, job training, and peer support that would provide more opportunities for residents and prevent a life towards crime. They worked with a justice reinvestment network of local organizations, including Cafe Reconcile, Safe Streets/Strong Communities and the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, to help establish local pilot projects for job training, health services, and mentorship programs supported by justice reinvestment funding.

View pdf of report.

New Orleans Credits: Project Director: Laura Kurgan. Project Coordinator: Steven Caputo, Research Associates: Johnna Cressica Brazier, Deborah Grossberg Katz. 2006 Fellows: Candy Chang. Andrew Colopy, Derek Lindner, Leah Meisterlin, Julia Molloy. This work builds upon a two year research project: Graphical Innovations in Justice Mapping, a collaboration between the Justice Mapping Center, the Spatial Information Design Lab and the JFA Institute. Project Team: Laura Kurgan, Eric Cadora (Project Directors), Sarah Williams, David Reinfurt. Invaluable research and thinking was also provided by the students in the GSAPP Advanced Studio, Spring 2007: Johnna Cressica Brazier, Steven Caputo, Jane Estrada, Laura Lee, Catie Liken, John G. Lloyd, Annemarie Scheel

Percent persons living in poverty per block group, 2000

Percent adults admitted to prison per block group, 2003

Prison expenditures per block in thousands of dollars, 2007

Justice reinvestment network in Central City, 2007

2008, 25″ x 1″, Temporary spray chalk on sidewalks.

The word on the street: BoingBoing, DailyCandy, Spacing Magazine, Geez Magazine

Team: Peter Ngau, Musyimi Mbathi, University of Nairobi Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Monica Bansal, Alyssa Boyer, Candy Chang, Kay Cheng, Leticia Crispin, Reuel Daniels, Jen Graeff, Beth Helton, Lily Langlois, Ryan Walsh, Eleanne van Vliet. Faculty & support: Eliott Sclar, Sumila Gulyani, Christie Marcella, Sigurd Grava, Julie Touber, Nicole Volavka, Patrick Kinney, Mike Reilly

Screenshots of mid-presentation. View pdf

3′ x 10′ project poster. View pdf

December 2009 – March 2010. Purchase a heavy stock print at various sizes. Buy the yellow one here. Buy the blue one here.

Team: Bongani Baloyi, Lucky Mkah, Lungile Maphumulo, Tebatso Lebotsa, Selaelo Chuene, Phumlani Suka, Warren Mabona, Lawrence Matshidiso, Sam Sikhosana, Anja Bredell, Jennifer Graeff, Belinda Kanpetch, Crighton Nichols, Elonah O’Neil, Dr. Marc Aurel Schnabel, Michelle Tabet, Candy Chang. Big thanks to Matthew Millar, Happy and Edwin of Spit n Polish, Yolande Kluth, Sam Sikhosana, and Jennifer van den Bussche.

Downtown Joburg

Diepsloot township

Communication tools are just as important of an infrastructure system as roads, sewers, and electricity. Flyers are spread throughout the interstitial spaces of the city and lampposts have become unofficial billboards for local communication. In a built environment where citizens’ flyers are illegal yet businesses can shout about their products on an increasing number of public surfaces, we need to consider whether public space can be better designed so that it is not necessarily allocated to the highest bidder but also reflects and facilitates our needs as a community and as individuals.

Thesis advisor: Robert Beauregard, Thesis reader: Sarah Williams

In addition to the event, Candy designed a local resource guide made for and by recovering women. To help them keep track of meetings and maintain a positive schedule, the guide includes a blank calendar as well as a map of female-friendly organizations and phone numbers for crisis, legal and recovery help. The pamphlet is easily xerox-able, maintained by local community groups and, as suggested by VANDU members, it folds down to wallet-size for easy portability. 2006.

Temporary park on Hastings Street

Women’s Guide to Downtown Eastside Resources

The team, minus VANDU Women’s Group (for privacy)

Entire Global Studio Vancouver family, learning from and working with other community groups in the area

Google map of sticker locations in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Guided tour, September 2007

Guided tour, September 2007

Work in progress

Project website

View pdf of all panels

2008 Digital print, 72″ x 72″. Koltsovo International Airport, Yekaterinburg, Russia. Installation by Art Koltsovo.

Photo by Evgene Belikov

Photo by Evgene Belikov

2008, Stencils and temporary spray chalk, 300′ long. New York, NY. Exhibited in Figment public art event.

Stencils, from first to last on path:

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For Good 50×70, Candy and James Reeves designed this poster for the African Medical and Research Foundation. Typography is the sole element used to highlight some startling facts: only half of people in Africa have access to safe water, and water-borne diseases kill one child every three seconds. You can purchase a heavy stock print a heavy stock print at various sizes.

View pdf

View pdf

2008, New York NY, 8″ x 8″, Stencils and temporary spray chalk.

Created for our design firm Red Antenna with production assistance by Kyra Porada. 16″ x 5″

On her routine commute from Brooklyn to Times Square, Candy spent a lot of time looking at ads of sexy beers and goofy reality shows. The average American is exposed to over 3,000 ads everyday and these images are increasingly entering our public spaces. This is not a requisite of capitalism, and we should be able to walk outside without being informed about the latest alcoholic beverage or fruity shampoo. Many citizens have responded to advertising posters with the gusto of grade school disobedience. Their weapon: the pen. Their mark: the scribbled moustache. But why stop there? What’s the hurry? Project Moustache subverts outdoor advertising with the distilled mark of the people: a big, burly, well-drawn moustache. Use this pdf to print your own on sticker paper and stick it to outdoor ads! Launch project site.

2005
Exhibited in Skinless Capital: Neoliberalism and Resistance, OPENSOURCE Gallery, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois

Photo by Stephen Baker

After blips of various parties in the first century, it’s strictly been a two-player game since 1869. Since then, the ball has been passed between Democrats and Republicans 14 times (10 since 1900). The longest period in the Presidency goes to the Democrats with a 20-year reign from 1933 to 1953 (three terms of Roosevelt and two terms of Truman). And the longest period of a one-party dominant Congress goes to the Democrats with 26 years from 1955 to 1981.

All in all, our Presidents have come from both sides. Since 1900, we’ve had 15 Republicans and 12 Democrats in office. During that time the President has been paired with a Congress dominated by the same party for 62 years and a Congress that is half or fully dominated by the other party for 44 years. And to complicate things, the parties themselves have changed over time. So just when you think we’re all going to be burning our bras or teaching our schoolchildren that Jesus invented people, the system seems to shift back.

November 3, 2010 update:

Does this really look like End of Days? See Clinton’s Congress.

.

Sources: U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, EnchantedLearning

In 2001 Candy, James Reeves, Stephen Baker, and Dan Parham started a design house & record label called Red Antenna. Along the way she made minimal techno, electro, and mellow riff raff. Various projects below. The best part of this is the 12″ packaging for Typography, which she designed and silk-screened by hand. It was later featured in the book Fingerprint: The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design. Music made with a vintage Roland Juno 60 keyboard & Ableton Live and performed with slideshows of sexy alphabets and Detroit city planning history.

Sample track - Telegram 41

Wheat-pasted silkscreens on 11 Spring Street, NYC

Photo by Stephen Baker

“Fiercely polished electro with rocked-out soul. Thick driving percussion, lowriding vintage bass for boomin’ systems, and sparkling analogue keyboard lines conjure sharp modernist grids, colorful scenes from tomorrow’s discotheques, robots with dirty minds, and half-forgotten night-drives through Babylon. Candy Chang is remarkably able to glance back at Prince and Cybotron, while keeping her designer’s eye fixed on a new style and sound all her own.” Released in 2003.

“From the hipshakin’ “Letterpress Express”, like a Russ Meyer soundtrack, to the all-in assault of “Bravo Futura”, as always the artwork is incredibly well packaged” – Syntax

“Bubbling stripped down acidic electro with swelling basslines and dark pop moods.” – Sonic Groove

—–

Photo by Stephen Baker

In 2007 at the Minimal/Maximal Festival in Grenoble, France and the Destroy All Cars event in New York City, she performed new tracks to an urban planning backdrop for educational times on the dance floor. Named after various Detroit locations, the Detroit Detroit songs pay homage to the city where she worked and danced many late nights in her late teens and early twenties. They fall somewhere under booty bass, synth pop, and minimal techno. She paired the music with a slideshow on Detroit’s history and metropolitan growth. The Grenoble event happened thanks to French distributor Chica Chic, and the other events were produced by record label Red Antenna. Music made with a Nord Lead keyboard and Ableton Live.

Track List

1 . Outer Drive
2 . Highland Park
3 . Greektown
4 . Cobo Hall
5 . Woodward Ave
6 . Hart Plaza

—–

In 2001 Steve Baker, James Reeves, Shawn Lindaberry, and I surrounded ourselves with samplers, guitar pedals, keyboards, flangers, and other toys and made some mellow music to sleep to. Behold ‘Sleep Management’ by Rewind Wonderland. Download mp3s below and sleep to it too. Released on our label Red Antenna.

01 Fabric
02 Professional Impulses
03 A Deeply Rooted Fear of Trees
04 Warm Night by the River
05 When We Were Pedestrian

The Mobile Cornucopia! A Hypothetical Development in New Orleans. More info here.

Fake Chinese Life (still shot)

I’m the Operator of my Pocket Calculator. Men in Hats series

I’m a Punk Rocker Yes I Am, Men in Hats series

“R!”

I Heart Barry. Turned into a t-shirt.

40 Houses in Bucks County, created from political canvassing for the Obama campaign

A Giant Hotel of Passing Strangers, from Hello Neighbors neighborhood communication research

Chirp, Pets series

Roar, Pets series

When Kraftwerk Went Analogue, Digital/Analogue Series

When Kraftwerk Went Digital, Digital/Analogue Series

Telephone, Telphone, Appliance Head series

When Baking Soda Was Enough, Appliance Head series

Camera, Pin-up Girl series. More pin-ups here…

Waiting for the Kettle Black

Cheez-its, Cheez-its, the Bedtime Snack

I used to be in the band The Sems. Here’s a flyer I designed when we played at Pianos in NYC.

From 2004 to 2005 Candy worked at The New York Times, where she was assistant art director of the Arts & Leisure section and art director of the TV Book. She laid out the pages and worked with a well-oiled team of editors, photo editors, and prepress technicians to produce the printed newspaper. This taught her a lot about delivering news to the city and has made her forever sensitive to rags, widows, and orphans. She ultimately left to study urban planning at Columbia University. Until then she solemnly walked by the Page One Conference Room everyday, giddily scored a copy of the Sunday magazine on Wednesdays, and enjoyed working with great people including On the Street fashion photographer Bill Cunningham who, at 80+ years old, still rides his bike and takes pictures of people around the city. He might be the only person who takes more pictures than Candy and her Asian trigger finger.

The great Bill Cunningham. That moustache, by the way, was a draft version of this sticker I was smacking up on subway ads during my commute from Brooklyn to Times Square.

In 2001 Candy, James Reeves, Stephen Baker, and Dan Parham, founded a record label & design house called Red Antenna. They released records & CDs of minimal techno, electro, and krautrock and played at parties in NYC, Detroit, Berlin, Grenoble, Antwerp, and Helsinki. As designers who DJ’d and made music, they also obsessed over the rekkid as an art object and spent many late nights hand-stamping and hand-silkscreening their custom kraftboard sleeves in their little NYC apartments. Over the years James and Steve grew the company into a successful design firm, and the record label became a distant memory. But the memory gets more entertaining with time, and Candy recently found old event photos (below). They had fun and learned a lot. Artists included Karl Zeiss, Com.munikation, Tomorrowland, Addisko, Kinosport, Rewind Wonderland, Variable X, Stochastic, Marco Raab, me, and many others on The New Electric Policy compilations.

Select records

Select CDs

Select Red Antenna events, 2001 – 2007

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