An engaging title

"Expose yourself as much as possible" one of the quotes from the Contemporary Design Module which is the reason that I am currently writing. I think that this sentence is easier in theory than practice. As designers we put ourselves out there more and more every time we design something that I have not yet gotten used to. It is I suppose something I have to work on.

One thing we focused on in the Contemporary Design Culture module was Dieter Rams' "10 principles of Good Design". We got to decide whether or not the principles are outdated and what would we replace them with. "Good design is environmentally friendly" and " Good design is long lasting" are two that we thought that were still true today. Both, we thought, were morally correct but, more so with the latter, were bad for business and there lies the grey area of product design. Whether or not we design a product that is long lasting and environmentally friendly and won't make that much money as when you buy one you don't need a second product or design a product that isn't long lasting nor environmentally friendly and make a lot of money because people have to keep on buying your product. Designing a product that is both long lasting and environmentally friendly may be the way to go but running into debt at the same time. We all want to be green and lower our carbon footprint which seems like an impossible feat when there are companies all over the world that pump out more pollutants in a week than you or I could in a year. But as product designers we have the power to make those pollutants less of a worry to future generations and make products more environmentally friendly while not adding to the clutter that is consumerism.

Consumerism. By definition it means "the promotion of the consumer's interests, the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable and also a preoccupation with and an inclination toward the buying of consumer goods." Consumerism has only become a recent development in human history only 200 years old and yet it has taken the world by storm. In the early stages of the phase a product designer were something of gods and most definitely irreplaceable, now it's not so much the case. Now we are seen almost as product re-designers. Creating new and exciting products which are more or less a reboot of the older model but with a few high-end touch ups. People are looking for different ways of doing things and open source designing is becoming a more utilised way of designing as a result. Open source designing is when a group of people come together to build on the ideas and eventually come up with a product. If design keeps on expanding in this direction a person may ask “Will we be designing ourselves out of jobs?"