Keeny Greeny

I've been spending the last few months trying to get under the skin of sustainable and 'good' design, but it's proving very difficult to reach a consensus in many areas as to what we should all be doing. True, there are some examples of great forward thinking design, like the Herman Miller Aero office seat, but the main difficulty I have is convincing everyday clients and my fellow designers as to what the best steps forward are and how we can make them economically viable. One of the main problems it seems to me is that consumerism is so fundamentally woven into our society as the model for happiness and good living. I finally got round to watching the http://www.storyofstuff.com/ video and it says everything I've been thinking and reading for ages... only thing is trying to change the momentum behind our current way of life and alter the rather self destructive direction we are currently pursuing.

There are lots of great ideas coming from people like wearewhatwedo.org and http://www.dothegreenthing.com/ but I wonder how global all that really is - who's actually reading them and taking part other than what probably amounts to a pretty small concerned minority at the moment. So how do we get these thoughts out to your every day Joe Blogs? Well the Internet is certainly doing it's part on many fronts, as I suppose is some of the media. But many of the arguments are still unresolved, and some ideas that seem really good on the face of things have terrible implications - such as trying to run our cars on Bio Ethanol- Bye Bye Forrest and food!

Anyway, just some ramblings as I sit here musing on how to draw all this stuff together into something that makes sense.