Blog Comments 4.

Blog comments on Core77: Project H Design (Anti)Manifesto: A Call To Action For Humanitarian (Product) Design, By Emily Pilloton

Wow, what an article. I learned SO much and I'm really glad I read it. This is something really important to me, the idea of impacting the world through art and design. I really hope that people read this and take her words to heart, because this is one of the things the world truly needs right now. I really loved the way she explained the idea of function vs. impact with the hammer story. A hammer's function is to drive a nail, its short-range impact is that it builds a house, and its long-range impact is that it provides shelter for those who need it. And that long-range impact is what designers and everyone, really, needs to be focusing on. And she is also right about how "Green design" as a trend is becoming overused and cliche, when it shouldn't really even be a term used, because all design should be designed with its environmental impact in mind. I can't even say all the things I can say about this article, I could write an entire paper on it. She makes so many extroadinary points, and I love her company's focus on humanitarian design. I am in love with the idea of enabling people through design. It comes down to the idea that if you give someone a fish, they'll eat for a day, but if you teach them how to fish, they'll eat for life. Except in this case, its like, if you design a luxury fishing rod, someone can catch a fish and send it to a starving person in a developing nation, or you can design a functional fishing rod to be given to the person in the developing nation and they can fish for themselves.
Perhaps I'm not as gifted at expressing this concept as the author of this article...
But I definitely identify and agree with all of her sentiments.

Some quotes I really loved:

"Our real goal should be to design the biggest impact with the least amount of product."

"Separating function from impact is a critical step in the design process, encouraging us to look for consequences beyond the obvious, and grounding us in considerations beyond the often-irresistible distractions of form and function."

"If all our clients are corporate, we're only perpetuating the profit-driven machine. In order to move design toward a more humanitarian and global service-based industry, we've got to redefine our client base."