Designs for Living

There are varieties of products around us. As a consumer, we focus more on the appearance of a product, the function of the product and the value of the product. We are always trying to find a product, a design which has the best solution to match our specific needs. Designers also focus on the appearance, the function, the value of a product, but we are more interested in the story behind a product that is how the designer comes to this solution and through which way the designer can communicate to the customers through his or her design.

After many projects I’ve done, I find it is the hardest part. The product, the design is not independently exists. ‘Emotion’ is always emphasized, the product, the design should make dialogue to the users. If we can see the emotion exist in a product, we may see it as part of our life, through this way, the product can be more close to our life. This can be the maximum value the product can reach which is more important than the function, the appearance of it. Many similar products can give customers the same function, the appearance can be changed easily, but emotion is irreplaceable.

The video talks a lot of chair design. It reminds me one of the chair design shown in the Power House Museum – Young Hearts Swing Freely. Patterns made by strings with different colors really give the boring chair a new life. The design is quite special from nowadays modern chair designs. It reminds me the time when I was a child, my grandma did weaving beside me.

The kitchen design, the room separate cupboard are really cool. We are living in the age with large population, room saving is quite important and they can make our life easier with reducing the steps to solve a problem. The light design is awesome, it can be adjusted to fit different customer’s need. Why we like these designs? The reason is they are closely connected to our life. They are designed to match the environment, they are designed to match more customers’ favor, and they are designs for living.

CLIMATE CHANGE – The 11th hour

This film is about to raise our awareness of the increasing seriousness of the environmental issues. Currently, there are many films related to climate change and disasters like ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, ‘Flood’. These films are more like to describe a specific disaster, a story. The 11^th hour is different, it is a documentary film. Many experts participate in this film, they tell us the seriousness of the climate change and how the relationship between our human and the nature is destroyed. They also guide us to change the current situation and our human destiny. To be honest, the film is a little bit tedium, but almost all of what the experts say are very reasonable and set me thinking.

The film mentioned that the planets have different distance from the sun. Some of them are too hot, some of them are too cold. The earth is the most and the only suitable planet for us to live now. I’ve heard that scientists are exploring to find the second planet for us to live now, but no one knows whether that will be possible and whether we have enough time to wait when that comes true. If not, all what we are doing now is like a suicide. I truly agree with what one viewpoint mentioned by one expert in the film. He said the earth can go back to green after many years. All the destroyed forests, polluted lakes can go back to what they were, this is because the earth has all the time in the world, but we don’t.

We human are advanced animal, that is true. But we do not have the authority to control the other lives and we are not allowed to ask for resources from the nature endlessly. Each species exist for some reason, we are equal. The development of the economy cannot be an excuse to destroy the relation between us and the nature. When the temperature of the earth goes up to 250^。C and we are no longer to survive. Can the money mean anything to us? Who cares how modern is your car, how luxury is your diamond? The nature gives us too much, and it is time for us to pay back to the nature. Otherwise, it will not be an equal deal between us and the nature. We will be abandoned.

As a designer, we should focus on how to allocate the resource more efficiently to match consumer needs. We do need to consider the whole life cycle of the product from the material used to the end life of the product. We can change consumer minds, we can change consumer behaviors. We can use our design to tell everyone that we are living in a sustainable world.