Sustainable Innovations

In his lecture about the sustainability and innovatins, Nathan Shedroff points out the increasing importance of being multi-talented by being able to integrating the design, business and sustainability together to create new products that are better for the environment and consumers.

He described how the Western societies are trapped within a world run by corporations and consumerism. The designers are not forced to sit down and think about ways to solve the problem, but they design purely to make money.

On the contrary, there are places where they used creativity and sustainability to solve their problems. One example Shedroff gave was of Curitiba Brazil. Their designers were forced to sit down and address their limitations; the small budget and not being able to build subway systems underground. Their solution? A bus system that runs like a subway, above ground!


http://covblogs.com/eatingbark/archives/800px-Bus_Stops_2_curitiba_brasil.jpg

This solution is sustainable by saving money and materials it would have used if it was built below grounds. Not only does it solve the problem, it also gives way to a pleasing design that brightens up the city.

Just because a subway system was originally designed for the underground, doesn't mean that there cannot be creative uses for the same content. This new and innovative way of thinking is just what we need in this society. We need to step out of our rut and keep thinking sustainable.

Objectify Our "Things"

Gary Hustwit’s film, Objectified, looks deeply into the relationship between object and people. It takes on the aspects of the designer's point of view, the manufacturer's point of view, and even the consumer's point of view. Consumerism drives our economy today. We look to new and "innovative" products to stay trendy and amused. Some might even say that we want to personify ourselves with the products that surround us. Companies and designers capitalize on this need for new things so they can keep selling new products. A very good example of this would be cars.

"Cars are the biggest and most abundant set of sculptures that we have in contact everyday in our lives." - Chris Bangle, Former Design Director of BMW Group.

In the film, Bangle describes how cars are made to last through time. To keep the consumer interested, care are designed so that the consumers will feel emotion when looking at the car.

http://themotorreport.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/bolwell_front.jpg

Most cars have faces, we tend create objects the mimic ourselves and see it as an extension of how we are, how we feel. As Scott McCloud once said, “we assign identities and emotions where none exist.”

Creative Combo

As it was pointed out one day in lecture, vision is an active process. It is mainly subjective, not objective. To be able to play on vision is a great way to be creative and innovative.


http://www.optical-illusions.in/illusions/tigerface_scary_optical_illusion.jpg

In the object above, the artist creates a new composition by combining a human hand print with a lion's face. This new combination gives new meaning to the composition. It created more depth. When a viewer looks at it, they are forced to ask themselves, "Why? Why has the artist chose to combine the two objects this way?" Maybe the artist was trying to gain more support to help conserve and protect wildlife habitats.

To be able to look outside the box for creative solutions is a great tool to have as a designer. Creating things that are different will set a person above the bar.

Designed Just For Me?

When I was a child, I never picked up a book and thought, "Wow, this book really caters to my needs!" There are many things that designers take a lot of time and effort into making, but never really receive the credit they deserve.


http://www.grouchyoldcripple.com/archives/children12.jpg

Take a children's picture book for example. The colors and pictures are designed to attract little kids. The text is made big and simple for readability, and the content and story interacts with each other for unity and understanding.

Such a small and seemingly simple thing took a lot of hard work and thought to make, but people really take for granted how it came to be like that in the first place. Another example could be traffic lights.


http://weathermachine.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/traffic-light.jpg

This object was intricately designed to facilitate efficiency and safety. Even the placement of the colors were standardized so that people with color blindness could use the same system. But in our everyday lives, how many people actually stop to thank the person who designed this thing? Just picture how the world would be without traffic lights. Shouldn't we recognize these invisible designers that facilitate our way of living more often?

Why is That "In"

In our struggle to be trendy and fashionable, we never really stop to think, "How am I different from the others that buy the same thing?"

Webster's dictionary defines fashionable as:

1.	observant of or conforming to the fashion; stylish: a fashionable young woman.

2.	of, characteristic of, used, or patronized by the world of fashion: a fashionable shop.

3.	current; popular: a fashionable topic of conversation.

In other words, copying the "trend" and being the same as everyone else.


http://alicebag.com/scoopedbythejapanese1.jpg

Companies spend billions and billions of dollars each year promoting and selling their products. They advertise in magazines, TV commercial, billboards, and tons of other places they can grab hold of.

And why do we listen and follow the trend? Society tends to ostracize people who are different, deem the "weird" and don't try to understand them. But at the same time, we praise people who are different and innovative. Take for example, the new music sensation Lady Gaga. Her fashion is odd and strange to the average person, yet people look up to her like a goddess.


http://www.sugarslam.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/lady-gaga.jpg

The world works in strange ways, if there was a formula for success, we'd all be on the same level. But what really sets us apart? How do we make something that will please everyone but still be different and new?

Colors and Perception; Mixing Our View

Color theory is a rather complex thing to analyze, but we must admit that colors make our world a lot more interesting. Color lets us decide is a vegetable is fresh, whether if an article of clothing is attractive, and so on. How we perceive colors can give a whole new meaning to the object we are looking at.


http://www.michaelarnoldart.com/ChuckClose05.jpg

The image above is a self portrait by artist Chuck Close. When the portrait is enlarged, the viewer can distinguish a diamond pattern filled with different colors. Chuck Close realizes that the human eye tends to mix colors that are similar together. He places similar colors close together in small areas so that the viewer will automatically recognize a unified form from this pattern.


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2449/3877162147_8095e1a6a2.jpg

When the color is taken out, this close up of one of Chuck Close's portraits become much less unified and the bigger picture is harder to distinguish. The value of the colors still remains, so our eyes still strain itself to make sense of this pattern.

comics; closure at work

In Scott McCloud's book, Understanding comics, McCloud brings up the idea of closure. McCloud defines closure as "This phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole." We can take fragmented dots of half-tone prints and observe a picture from it. If you look carefully at newspapers or certain types of print, you will notice that the images we see are made of clusters of dots. We can perceive them as a whole because of the proximity of these clusters that creates an illusion of the image.


http://www.allcatsaregrey.co.uk/images/scans/comics/Understanding-Comics-p61.png
We can perceive a whole person standing even though the frame is cut off, we sense time and space by moving through panels in a comic book with fragmented scenes. When reading a comic, we wouldn't say "This is the upperhalf of a body with no legs." Through closure, we assume that the real person is there and move on with the story.



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We can even sense time and space within the different frames of comics. The panels run linearly with fragmented captures of different scenes. Without closure, a comic would just be a bunch of illustrations of separate events without a story, pictures would be just a dot, and a lot of thigns wouldn't make sense.