About Me.
Your Juan and Only.
Designer, Researcher and Art Director
Juan Saavedra's experience reflects a range of industries which include fashion & apparel, art, music & entertainment and community & sexual health. His interests included volunteerism, social innovation, design-activism and entrepreneurship. He is a recipient of the Mayor’s Community Safety Award (2017) from the City of Toronto for promoting collaboration and developing innovative arts-based programming. Other accomplishments include, spearheading a Vital Ideas grant to research emerging issues among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing LGBTQ youth and presenting on topics such as: Co-Design, Death and Dying, World Sustainability, HIV, LGBTQ and Social Health. He holds a master’s degree in Design from Carleton University's School of Industrial Design.
Skills & Expertise
Invited Talks
Design Research and Design Activism.
Creatively Inclined Queer Activism, Artists and Panel Talks. Ottawa School of Visual Art, Ottawa, Canada.
Professional talk on design practices and in relation to today's activism
Deconstructing LGBTQ+ Identity and Collaborating Towards Social Well-Being.
World Sustainability Framework: Paris Design Summit. La Défense - Paris, France.
How might design be used to confront social inequalities?
Undetectable or Undermined?
HIV Advertising and the process of letting old ideas die.
Death and Dying Symposium, OCAD University. Toronto, Canada.
Exploring the Cultural Impacts of HIV Advertising and Misinformation
Design-Activism:
Exploring the aesthetics of collaboration and inclusion in the context of LGBTQ people.
The Future of Work, DesignTO Symposium at George Brown College. Toronto, Canada
A Study of LGBTQ community Activism in the Context of Disability
Redesigning HIV Education and Engagement:
Mobilizing Young Designers as Active Citizens and Critics.
ENDGAME: A Conference by the Ontario HIV Treatment Netowrk, Toronto, Canada
A study presenting years of grassroots projects by Young Canandian Designers in the context of HIV.
Education and Training
Master of Design
Carleton University, School of Industrial Design, Ottawa, Canada.
A research-focused program probing deeply into the theoretical and research issues related to design research, interdisciplinary design development and strategic design planning.
Final Thesis Keywords: Design Activism, Social Innovation, Critical Disability, LGBTQ, Queer Theory, Accessbility
Bachelor of Creative Advertising
Humber College, Shool of Media and Technology,Toronto, Canada.
360-degree education in the key aspects of advertising: art direction, copywriting, account management and strategy.
Final Thesis Keywords: HIV Advertising, Society, Co-Design, Youth
