The Inconvenient Truth

In this documentary Al Gore argues his view on the controversial debate of climate change. It portrays Gorge’s dedication to educate the world on climate change and cause a change in the way society thinks and acts.

Focus Points

-Gore dramatically juxtaposes images of gorgeous natural landscapes before and after global warming in a pursuit to draw the viewer’s attention. He goes on to back these images up with statistics, and links modern day catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina to the change in this data. And further portrays the nightmare like view of the world if these changes continue to occur.

-Gore depicts how society takes an ‘ignorance is bliss’ like approach to global warming. He emphasizes Politicians don’t take the stats seriously which in turn forces may not to believe scientific warnings. He portrays the changes in our surrounding due to global warming are gradual therefore people are under the impression that this problem is not urgent hence action is not being seen. However I see it as people don’t know who to believe, don’t know how to ‘Separate the truth from fiction’, which honestly is near impossible to do in any issue related to politics.

-He portrays his background from childhood, to the loss of a son, a sister and a father, to a political downfall and portrays how these events pushed him towards his present career. However he goes on to emphasizes the frustration of trying to persuade society to change, however beside his great effort and determination no change is occurring.

- By focusing in on national and global accomplishments eg developing equal women’s rights, demolishing communism, landing on the moon, Gores emphasizes that individuals are a powerful force when we band together and strive for a common goal. He concludes by pledging it’s not too late to make change and pleads for viewers to change their ways and inspire others to make similar changes in the fight to save our planet.

Why fellow designers should watch this documentary?

Yes, all of us contribute to climate change and can individually change our ways to reduce our carbon output, but as industrial designers we play an even more crucial part in creating change. We have the power to create new products or change existing products so that they don’t harm the environment. As designers we have an obligation to create products or systems that life cycle causes minimum environmentally damage. Our choices of material/ energy choice, manufacturing techniques are pivotal decisions. Decisions which are crucial in the fight for reducing the impact of climate change. Through the environmentally friendly products and systems we create, we have the opportunity to educate society on climate change and promote and inspire our consumers to live a fulfilling eco-friendly lifestyle. As designers it is our job is to create solutions to problems- and climate change is our present challenge to conquer; ‘The solution is in our hands’. Fellow industrial designers should watch this so that climate change is brought to their attention forcing them to create environmentally conscious designs that have the power to reduce the impact of global warming.

Peer comments

http://reza-sazesh.blogspot.com/2011/10/light-design-hero-shot.html?showComment=1318935828770#c3530339186541876489

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http://dougcusack-ides1031.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-two-upcycled-utility-box.html?showComment=1318937100993#c6651825787578502333

http://robertvlahovic.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html?showComment=1318940542752#c609385743458417622

http://vindustriald.blogspot.com/2011/10/project-2-rationale.html?showComment=1318941959779#c3777982460698882564

http://thesolidstate.blogspot.com/2011/10/up-cycling-unwanted-materials-lamp.html?showComment=1318944879428#c4673914267551416283

The story of stuff by Annie Leonardo

Annie Leonardo’s videos and books are internationally controversial being called “an anti-consumerism diatribe” and even “community college Marxism in a ponytail.” This negative critic is due to she realistically portrays our negative way of living.

This clip enlightens us on the material economy process; the extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal of consumer goods, forcing us to realise the social and environmental impacts of the way we are using this process but all so showing us the alternatives to this devastating process.

Annie Leonardo points out that “you cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely”; in other words  to ensure the world stays inhabitable we cannot extract natural resources at an incredible high rate to produce disposable products through a process which has a huge toxic output.

The clip enlightens us on how companies use a products obselence to influence a higher consumer consumption rate. They either use;

-those that are made to have poor durability

-those companies which readily produce new editions to the product and the consumer feels like they need the new version eg  apple ipods are a perfect example of this as a new generation is brought onto the market yearly,  the difference between new and old being predominantly in the aesthetics.

Leonardo further goes onto portray  that the Americans unstable economy relies on this high consumption rate to stay afloat, as seen in cases such as the nine eleven bombings where people were in a state of devastation and stopped buying goods George bush told the population to SHOP.  It’s a continual circle of spend money shopping- work to pay debts-spend money shopping ect this life cycle leaves the population having the smallest amount of leisure time in history. This means no down time to indulge in family and friend relationships which impacts greatly on their happiness. Besides from the social impacts of this process the environmental consequences will be fatal to our planet, for example;

·         We lose 50,000 acres of trees a day globally to deforestation for the making of our paper, furniture, houses etc.

·         In the U.S., each person uses 200 gallons of water on their lawns per day during the growing season.

·         It takes 256 gallons of water to produce a single cotton t-shirt.

·         The average gold wedding ring creates about 20 tons of hazardous waste

In conclusion she expresses her view that it is great that there are many activists focusing  on a small part of the consumer goods lifecycle (e.g. fighting strip mining, hazardous waste disposal, or wasteful transportation of goods). However to make a real change Leonard believes activist in extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal areas need to come together. Although each area can stand alone; each is part of a greater system which must be carefully considered in order to maximize the design’s usability, efficiency, and sustainability.

As a designer this clip made me realize I must not only associate with people from production but all these areas; to truly make a positive impact we must come together to bring around the most successful solutions to the terrible problems our kind has created.

Cutting Diagram

Poster

Packaging Instructions

Rationale

The use of the recycled posters (polypropylene) and the process of Flat pack packaging were the two focus points of this project, hence I wanted my final solution to utilised, and emphasized the materials key properties but also have a successful minimalistic packaging technique.

I wanted to show that this particular material is ideal to be applied to lighting, and also show that no other material could be used to make this particular light, I feel I accomplished this by goal by utilising the materials ability to hold a folded edge, its memory which allows it to spring from flat packaged form to constructed form and its white side which effectively displays shadows cast by its own structure, the white side’s Soft matt shine also picks up and reflects ambient light which is a gorgeous effect. Rigidity is another key property of this material; I wanted to play with this quality by contrasting it with the softness of cotton thread to create interest within my design.

As this material has so many great qualities I wanted to really ‘show it off’ by using a vast surface area. These large surface areas allowed the posters coloured side to be illuminated through the white side and become a dominate feature.  This vast use of material also allows a glow of the posters inside colours glow out the bottom of the lamp.

I didn’t want my design to fall in to the cheap category of lighting for example the flat packet lanterns that can be found in cheap shops or markets which are relatively disposable. I wanted my lamp to be a high end product, that is kept for a long period of time becoming greatly loved and sentimental ect. From researched I found that many of these cheaper lamps were greatly based on origami folding methods and only utilised the single material. This mainstream trend pushed me toward alternate techniques such as fabric manipulation and the introduction of cotton thread as a second material. By straying from the mainstream I hope that my design, though mass produced will have unique essences which will allow my design to stand out from its competitors.

From research I identified a key problem with existing flat packaged products including lights was that they were too complicated and/or time consuming for the consumer, which lead to many consumers having to hire a tradesperson just for assembly. Another problem which I found was that many flat packaged products were near impossible to dismantle and re construct after the original construction.  Hence I had a great desire to create a successful, simple packaging process that took up limited space and gave the consumer ease in constructing, deconstructing and re constructing the lamp. This desire lead to the final design being a single component design which through simple folding is easily transformed from packaged form to a constructed light and back again.