What do you consider to be the most important challenge for designers to tackle today?

Sarah gave the Final Word

This is actually a question I ponder almost daily. My education and prior work experience in the architecture profession leads me to constantly vacillate between two positions: one that places the responsibility to develop products that help to reshape and improve the way we function individually and as a society firmly on the designer and yet in another somewhat contradictory way, I struggle with the environmental repercussions of our desire for design progress such as carbon footprint and consumption, as well as the preservation of specific design models. Historically speaking, we look to pivotal shifts through the seminal work of the Arts and Crafts movement, the Bauhaus, Mid-Century Modernist textile and furniture designers, to name a few, for our inspiration. However, in a sense, the most essential tool for designers today is not necessarily design itself, but an optimism that their work is capable of informing, affecting and altering society’s attitude and engagement with its physical and virtual atmosphere.

So, my question then: “Are we as designers capable of completing this difficult task?”

Monday, July 19 at 12:46pm