Nathan Shedroff's "Design is the Problem"

In "Design is the Problem," Nathan Shedroff discusses the ways that design influences society through sustainability, design, and business. He says that sustainable design is, "Design and development that meets today's needs without preventing those needs from being met by future generations." What Shedroff is saying here is that designers need to create content for today's issues in a form that won't make things worse for our children in the future. In order for this to be so, the form that designers must keep in mind when creating products is to design products in a form that can be "reduced, reused, recycled, and restored." In other words, they need to be economically friendly. These products need to use up fewer materials while simultaneously providing more meaning for society. Designers need to design products for society today that don't hurt it in the future. The content of these products is derived from designing techniques such as prototyping, ethnographic techniques, and critique.  The final form is adapted to suit the business world after it goes through some checks like total quality management, SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), the Doblin Value Model, and other things.  Great designers concerned with sustainability must do a lot to design the best form that a product should take to both suit society's needs while simultaneously not harming the planet.

(image thanks to:   http://sustainabilityninja.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/feature-images/government-industry-sustainability.jpg )

Headbands

A recent rise in fashion has been shown in the area of headwear, namely headbands.  They are used in society for many different purposes from holding back a person’s hair to merely just being an accessory.  For example, in the television show Gossip Girl, Leighton Meester’s character Blair Waldorf utilizes headbands in the first two seasons very well.  In practically every episode she wears a very sophisticated headband that is an accessory that adds to her classic “school girl” look.  On the other hand, a lot of athletes wear headbands mainly for the purpose of keeping their hair out of their face.  There are many different types of headbands that are either pre-made, like the more fashionable ones tend to be, and home-made ones, like the ones athletes make out of pre-wrap.  Headbands come in all sorts of shapes and sizes for people to accessorize themselves with.  They can be made of different materials, like plastic or nylon, and they can either be stylized and fancy or just plain-looking.  Society uses headbands to either make a fashion statement by distinguishing themselves from others, or to just merely make sure that their hair doesn’t bother them as they participate in an activity.

image thanks to:  (http://kuwait-style.com/images/2008/10/10-14-08-GOSSIP-GIRL-BLAIR-HAIRBAND-STYLE.jpg)