I came across this company in the UK who are releasing an open source hydrogen fuel cell car, while researching alternative fuels. I wanted to share a couple of quotes… The car doesn’t interest me so much as the business model: they recognise that most people don’t necessarily want an object (the car) that simply depreciates, they just want to be able to move around. Thus, they are moving away from the idea of car ownership- they say “Car manufacturers make money from selling cars and parts- which rewards obsolescence and high running costs”- they want to move towards leasing vehicles- which “rewards longevity and low running costs”- the car manufacturers take responsibility for the car, it’s fuel, and fixing it up.

They go onto say:

“we can never achieve a sustainable system whilst the interests of one stakeholder group, such as shareholders legally trumps the interests of society or the environment.”

Nail on the head I think- the interests of the highest earners dictates our overall direction, (as opposed to what a society wants) the desirable direction, for those high earners being to earn even more. Thus we have a never ending cycle.

http://www.riversimple.com/

For budget airlines.

Additional seat = £20
Suitcase = £30

Saving = £10

Here’s an idea I had for a title which I suppose could turn into a project brief…

Pay matters. How much you earn can determine your lifestyle, where you can afford to live, and your aspirations and status. But to what extent does what we get paid confer ‘worth’? Beyond a narrow notion of productivity, what impact does our work have on the rest of society, and do the financial rewards we receive correspond to this? Do those that get more contribute more to society?

A really interesting report conducted by the NEF (the new economics foundation) about how we value worth/wealth. In the reports heavy social weighting it presents an interesting system of gauging wealth- and offers a potentially great alternative to how we value ourselves; in terms of how much societal value we create as opposed to destroy. Unfortunately I cannot see very much of what is suggested being implemented, but perhaps we can see a shifting attitude in the public- the outrage at bankers taking home huge bonuses, despite not bringing very much societal worth.

Our report tells the story of six different jobs. We have chosen jobs from across the private and public sectors and deliberately chosen ones that illustrate the problem. Three are low paid – a hospital cleaner, a recycling plant worker and a childcare worker. The others are highly paid – a City banker, an advertising executive and a tax accountant. We examined the contributions they make to society, and found that, in this case, it was the lower paid jobs which involved more valuable work.

I thoroughly recommend downloading the report and reading at least some of it.

Just caught the repeat of Prescott: The Class System And Me from the other week.

Seriously, what a pair of cocks

I hate being that massive art school twat in the street taking the snaps (the shadow was an accident, it wasn’t intended to break down the forth wall), but I saw this earlier and got thinking: after the collapse of the society as we know it, when grocers are securing themselves in DIY bunkers, will we still have to pay extortionate fares to get around the big city? Oh, and DANGER DOGS…WTF?! Sounds like my new dream posse.

Stumbling across this article The rise and rise of ‘anti-design’ earlier, I thought I’d struck art school journalism gold - having still not worked out exactly what it is that those alleged anti-designers actually do with their time. But upon further investigation it transpires we’re in fact looking at an article, that starts life chatting shit about Phillipe Starck and his new wind turbines, written by some chump design consultant practically describing ‘green designers’ as the axis of design evil, where the phrase anti-design is synonymous with, say, anti-Americanism.

‘The Design Council says: “Good design is sustainable design. It results in objects, systems or services that work aesthetically, functionally and commercially, improving people’s lives and making the smallest possible impact on the planet.”

‘Hang on. Isn’t design always about making an impact? Not according to the green-design movement, or the ‘design deniers’ who argue for placing limits on human ingenuity and creativity.’

Isn’t design always about making an impact…on…the…planet? Like, ecologically? This is where my disbelief began…from small impact on the planet to limits on human ingenuity in one fell swoop, but, shit, it goes on and on.

‘The greening of design, as epitomised by the likes of Starck and others, preaches to the rest of us on how to live differently. In practical terms, this means choosing sustainable or ethically acceptable design practices over those that are capable of making more of an impact using the best, newest and most innovative materials and resources.’

The greening of design preaches to the rest of us how to live differently? Surely designers and design have always done this - only difference is this guy doesn’t appreciate the connotations of the lingo this time ’round. Choosing sustainable practices over those using ‘the best, newest and most innovative materials and resources’ is surely only a reversal of the priorities of previous generations of designers who as opposed to preaching ‘to the rest of us on how to live differently’, with the help of manufacturers, big business, and mugs like this guy, allowed (at the very least) the economically disadvantaged to be forced into living their lives within designers’ moulds. ‘Best’ ‘newest’ ‘most innovative’ are myths, biased to the prerogatives of whatever or whoever has the money to control production. Design and designers in this context serve as both a product and producer of such whims, and as opposed to being merely anthropocentric, are most importantly capital-centric, to the extent that I believe the kind of ‘design’ and ‘innovation’ the author speaks of only exists to serve businesses and perpetuate an individual’s capital gain, not to mention, as a result, for want of a better word, social and political status quo.

To a guy like this, words and phrases like ‘best’ ‘newest’ ‘most innovative’, and I don’t know, fucking ‘progress’ and whatever, can only be associated with isolated, futile, concerns when considering, say for instance, a genuine, existent future. But hold on, he has that covered already, in his never ending quest for the best, newest and most innovatively designed solutions, the article concludes that ‘we need bigger, better and dependable power stations (including nuclear ones), not small home generators’.

In the couple of weeks since reading this book, I seem to have lost any interest I might have vaguely had in reviewing it - or whatever writing something of any worth about a book is called these days. Instead, I’ve unintentionally hung onto something Jurgen Bey had to say about economics that caught me off guard at the time - and that I tried to suppress any reaction to for the remainder of the book, believing that as opposed to taking the time to think the issue through, for the sake of my desire to continue reading the book uninterrupted, I’d more than likely make a knee-jerk judgement that would probably effect my perspective of, or even interest in, everything he had to say for himself thereafter.

In the book, based on its overall theme of comparing some of yesteryear’s design stars (Bruno Munari, and Charles and Ray Eames) with some of today’s (Marti Guixe and Jurgen Bey), one of the editors ‘re-formulates’ thirty questions from a 1969 interview with Charles Eames, and conducts identical interviews with Guixe, and Bey using these, at times pretty dubious, re-formulations. (For instance, how the fuck is the question ‘Does design imply the idea of products that are necessarily useful?’ ‘re-formulated for contemporary design practice’ into the question ‘Does design have to be beautiful?’?)

So here’s the thing that’s stuck with me - and for the record, its importance is almost undeniably exaggerated by the fact that Jurgen Bey is one of the few designers (who’s still alive) that inspired me to study design in the first place - when asked ‘Should design be affordable?’, Bey answered:

‘What is affordable? Not everything needs to be bought by everyone. We always need things to aspire to.’

The thing is, when he was asked what his ‘design ethic’ is, he was all, ‘I believe in the world and in humanity and that is why I make things for people. But always for a specific part of the world. I don’t believe in something for everybody…’ And so reading the first two sentences of the quote above I thought we were headed along the same route, but material/economic aspirations?

Do we really ‘always need things to aspire to’?