“Your future depends on many things, but mostly on you“.

Being a designer is difficult. No. Sorry, let me start again…
Being an ethical and socially conscious designer is difficult.
It is much easier to block those aspects of design profession out and be glamoures, designing pretty things, which can go straight onto the window display of an expensive shop or a gallery wall.
But as soon as you start considering ‘bigger issues’ in your work, the level of expectations seems to go up, and no longer are you being praised for the ’good bits’ but questioned whether you could have done better.

In today’s world full of threats of nuclear war, biological catastrophe, and climate change, (which brings into question, how can humanity continue to survive?), there seems to be forming, a general state of panic, which echo’s directly into the design world.
When scientific reports contradict themselves… ‘global warming is happening and we have to change our style of living to save the Earth’ vs.. ‘it is too late to do anything, we should be investing into moving to some other planet’… it is difficult to know what to believe and what are the priorities.

And it doesn’t get any easier when we take to the consideration the ‘smaller picture’ - not the global crisis but the day-to-day community problems.
As Kate Stohr suggests, designers should “(…) humbly venture into the communities in which they live, listen to the needs of their neighbours, and offer their services".
Very well, but again – what are the priorities? and what are the expectations?
On one hand we are told to ‘design for the future’, yet on the other ‘to solve the existing problems.

I believe that we-designers shouldn’t worry too much about the future, as long as we keep in mind that “The future is always beginning now”. There is now point in trying to predict what will happen in 50-100 years time and what kind of problems will we be facing than… as it is almost if not completely impossible.
I agree that while designing we should be ethical and do not forget to consider the possible future impact of our work (i.e. using sustainable materials, building homes which will last etc), however I feel that we shouldn’t try to jump ahead of our times as the conditions can change drastically (for example the resources of today might no longer be available) and all we’ll be left with, will be set of sketches and concepts.
As Eric Hoffer puts it:
“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists”.

A Buddhist saying says:
“If you want to know your past, look into your present conditions.
If you want to know your future, look into your present actions.”

So let’s make ethical decisions about the way we design and about what we design and remember that each one of us can be a butterfly whose fluttering wings can cause a storm on the other side of the planet.




• http://www.quotegarden.com/future.html
• Kate Stohr, ‘100 Years of Humanitarian Design,’ in
Design Like you Give a Damn (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006)
• http://quotations.home.worldnet.att.net/future.html
• http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_future.html