Core 77 semi-recently posted an interesting, longish interview with Nathan Shedroff, chair of the MBA in Design Strategy program at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco and the author of several books on design. His most recent book is Design is the Problem, which is about "how the design industry can approach the world in a more sustainable way."

The interview itself is broad -- Shedroff expands on ten or so related concepts, each one germane in some way to his overall view of "sustainability." Whether or not you'll find his take on every topic persuasive in every detail, they are as a whole uniformly interesting and well-measured. No small task, considering the breadth of opinions he delivers: he discusses everything from the maligned value of business to the proliferation of NGOs to rampant occidental capitalism.

His points are also admirably rooted in practical reality. One of my favorite moments from the interview comes in response to the question, "What should business be doing to change the world for the better and what can designers do to encourage this to happen?" The quote below is his answer to the latter half of this question, abridged in several places where the lack of context rendered it unintelligible.

Designers need to start making changes ourselves, with or without a mandate, in the things we make. We can choose to not talk about materials substitutions or other improvements in impacts if our managers don't want to hear about them and, instead, we can highlight the improvements they do want to hear about -- like improvements in efficiency. We can learn to speak "their" language authoritatively and speak to risk mitigation and gains in owner's equity.

We need to talk about this to our peers, managers, and clients with an encouraging, quiet, and strong imperative that isn't sensationalized. If they turn-off at the mention of climate change, switch to cute, fluffy polar bears drowning. If they don't respond to that, explain that the market for their goods tanks when customers are out of work, afraid of the food they eat, or their homes are flooded.

Probably worth a read.
(Photo credit: Core 77)

Read More...

The Fall of Man, Lukas Cranach the Elder

Namely, it indicates that 67% of consumers believe it's important to buy ethically responsible products, and that 51% of them are willing to pay more for those products. What's more, 28% of consumers avoid buying products from companies whose political and social positions they disagree with, while 17% have told others to stop buying products from those companies.

While none of comes as a surprise, exactly, there's another interesting statistic that might: according to the survey, 23% of consumers say they have "no way of knowing" if a product does what it claims. To wit, there what appears to be a statistically verifiable "green trust gap." Now, why might that be the case?

Raphael Bemporad, co-founder of BBMG, says the findings mean that marketers need to better communicate with consumers and be more transparent. DLB's official response? Well, duh.

Let's look at two films about information.

The first was created recently by Pittsburgh based Maya Design.

Let's say I put three mugs in front of you...If I then ask you the question, "do you see my favorite mug?" would you know which one it is?

The second was created in 1953 by Ray and Charles Eames.

...a nervous condition on the part of the receiver...could change the message from "I love you" to "I hate you." How do you combat it? One way is through redundancy, "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you."

I think, among many telling differences between these two films, it is perhaps most telling what and how much information they choose to deliver about information.

Isotype was developed by the Viennese social scientist and philosopher Otto Neurath. Neurath saw a virtually illiterate proletariat emancipating, stimulated by socialism. For their advancement, he knew, they would need knowledge of the world around them. This knowledge should, he thought, not take the form of (relatively opaque) written language, but should rather be directly illustrated in straightforward images.

Gerd Arntz was the designer tasked with making Isotype’s pictograms. In sum, Arntz designed some 4000 such signs, which symbolized data from industry, demographics, politics and economy.

The process of selecting the relevant symbols, creating the rules, and prescribing the interplay between Isotype and (say) German is a design task of absolutely epic proportions, which is to say nothing of the ideological component of the project. All told, I expect Isotype to prove incredibly compelling grist for thinking about design ethics, political ideology and design, and design communication.^* It is in my estimation a rare find indeed.