The three basic themes that are drawn from all these films were that designers needed to tackle transportation, education and water. Making education empowerment, designing simple water retrieval methods for rural villages and tackling complex subway maps all have one thing in common, creating a better life for the audience of the information designed.
The first video I watched was Tina Roth Eisenbery, former Design Director at ThinkMap and current SwissMiss Studio. Her first answer to the question made me glad that I chose her because I have actually had this same thought before. The last apartment I lived in didn’t have central heating, so every year around September I would go out to a village with one of my 60 something-year-old man neighbors to get my 3 meters of wood for the winter. It was really hard to find somewhere, especially as a foreigner, so for this guy to take me out in his 1970 make shift BMW, 40 minutes outside of town to get my wood was a huge deal. We got there and the wood seller had about an acre of land where there were just meticulously placed heaps of wood piled, waiting for his customers to come pick up. I had to carry that 3 cubic meters of wood up three flights of stairs, alone, and once I did I got made fun of how ‘messy’ my pile looked (they were all stored outside, in the apartment hallways) compared to everyone else’s. I then looked around and then realized, the same thing Eisenberg noticed about the brilliant patterns and how each piece of wood was thought out before lain down. I got compliments the next year on how my wood looked cleaner which I saw as a big accomplishment.
Ingenuity, utility, beauty is what Ken Carbone deems to be essential for design. He talks about an innovative water retrieval device and at it’s simplicity has changed villages water retrieval methods forever.
Ze Frank was very frank and casual, and dropped Jane Mcgonigal, which I’m sure Lackaff would enjoy. He talks about social design and how it’s becomes simplified and helps us look through things in a different lens. “Everything should be exposed to the process of being interesting.” I think these three main points of topic that were a common theme through out the designers answers are telling. Transportation, water and education are huge things that effect peoples lives across the world daily. If designed well, or better, these things can become empowering for audiences and communities worldwide.
Here’s my wood the second year, do you think it’s cleaner?:
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