Our Mission
TYTHEdesign's mission focuses on supporting the needs of agencies working in the social sector. We use design innovation to increase the impact of these groups serving the public good. By drawing on our multidisciplinary team we work in a collaborative and iterative process with the partnering organizations to ensure that the solution matches long-term needs of the community. We work every step of the way until a project is complete or fully implemented.
We enjoy working with organizations that are committed to making their community a better place. We dedicated our time to those organizations who are truly helping those we need it most.
Why are we called TYTHEdesign?
TYTHEdesign's name comes from the historical practice of "tithing", the idea of contributing a tenth of a harvest or a tenth of the products of a workshop to support the community. Although tithing has a religious history, our name draws the work of Victor Panenek (1927-1999) around social design tithing. He was a social designer and educator who strongly advocated the social and ecologically responsible design of products, tools and community infrastructure. He wrote about the design industry that “we can pay by giving ten percent of our crop of ideas and talents to the seventy-five percent of mankind in need” (Design for the Real World, 1992:68). In this tradition, TYTHEdesign is structured to do 10% of our work on a pro bono basis. To reinforce this commitment we selected a corporate name that bound us to this commitment and to our mission to help address social need.
Why we do what we do?
TYTHEdesign was founded in 2010 after numerous volunteering experiences by our core staff within the social sector throughout the US and Canada. We observed these organizations struggling with challenges based in unsustainable organizational structures and/or inefficient communication strategies. Engaging with these groups, we found that they greatly benefited from design innovation leading us to start a consulting service focusing on the social sector.
