TASK 5 - Social Design

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"Waste is a design flaw." Kate Krebs, National Recycling Coalition, 2008.

The socially responsible apporach to design work is something that many designers are following. In a world where climate change is a serious problem, and natural fuels are running out, everyone needs to relook at their carbon footprint.

Greengaged, held at the UK Design Council, set out to examine the ecological crisis, explore the role of design and debate the consequential responsibility of designers.

It was claimed that as designers we are very good at producing waste, but we are all very bad at using it. Rob Holdway, Founder of Giraffe Innovation and Presenter of Channel 4's "Dumped" series, expressed his thoughts on the role of education to teach designers to contextualize their work, and further highlighted the individual responsibility that we, as designers, have to be more aware of what our clients and their briefs are asking of us. In a consumer culture, the ephemerality of design needs to be transformed and celebrated, by only designing consumer products from biodegradable materials.

So what designers have strong ethics and a responsible approach to their design work?


A Better World by Design brings a global community of innovators, to reach across disciplines and unite under a common goal. Presenters share engaging stories, workshops teach creative skills, and discussions reframe perspectives. A Better World by Design is an immersive experience that deepens our understanding of the power of design, technology, and enterprise to reshape our communities and sustain our environment.


The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders working together to create positive environmental and social impact. Their focus is on creating positive impact in the creative community by connecting a broad network throughout the creative community, inspiring and motivating our members to share best practices, bold ideas, and compelling case studies, and enabling new initiatives to grow from the foundation built by the Designers Accord.

They are working on many exiting projects, one of many is Fashion Futures


Slow is Beautiful from Alex Johnson on Vimeo.


Another project that I thought was about trying to get poeple to stop using plastic water bottles by changing the way people drank water




The most recent development for KOR includes artist series bottles, where graphics reinforce the cause-motivated colors: These bottles will sell for $5 more and that entire fee will go directly to the cause, another detail RKS hopes the consumer will proudly tell those around them.

At the moment IDEO are hosting a competition inviting people to show a vision of a future shaped by climate change


Our Invitation To You from IDEO on Vimeo.



Sam and Dave Save the World from IDEO on Vimeo.

In “Sam and Dave Save the World,” the IDEO Chicago team elected to explore climate change through the constraints of a typical American city. Conceptually, they felt that if a city were a place to escape to (or from), or a place within which one could live without limits, then it would not be a workable city. So they decided to portray a city with limits, as a contained space, by way of a “single house” (as illustrated by the Foam core prototypes in the piece).

You’ll see two side-by-side stories about two neighbors who respond very differently to climate change. Sam reacts; Dave responds. Sam adapts; Dave searches for solutions. The split-screen storytelling technique is effective for calling out these distinctions.

TasK 3 V2 - Digital Design Festival

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I want to the SAP Weekend: Digital Design Festival at the V&A, which had many talks, workshops and exhibitions, all centered around digital design. It was amazing!

Some of the work these guys are doing is way over my head, there use of open source programming to create digital images is out of this world. One of the talks that really interested me was by Memo Akten, whose company "The Mega Super Awesome Visuals Company" is doing some outstanding work.
He creates programs with OpenFrameworks and Processing which use human interaction and music to make this beautiful animations, that are really quite surreal!


Depeche Mode - Fragile Tension from DJ Rigel on Vimeo.

The OpenFrameworks Lab was interesting too, with loads of hackers sitting around brainstorming about how to come up with the next best thing... like this...




Big Screams from prisonerjohn on Vimeo.


Where you control a character on screen using your phone! Scream as loud as you can to push everyone else off and be the last one standing!

The final workshop I went to a Recode Decode workshop with Karson Schmit, the creator of the Decode digital identity, which was a short workshop using open souse code. I found it rather complicated! A lot more reading and coding experience is needed to get to his level... I did manage to write a little programme (with his help!) to create an image of random coloured circles... very impressive I thought :-)