Design For Life

DESIGN FOR LIFE- Philipe Starck

" Designers are force with the power to change society. With a song a singer can change the world, politician can change with law and with us with a chair and toilet brush" this quote from the show is quite deep; ofcourse we cannot take it quite literally that we can change the world with just a chair or a brush but we can slowly change the lifestyle of the society living in the WORLD.

The show presents 12 ameture designer from UK to compete against one another for a 6 month position at Starck Paris studio, the show gives insight of how these 12 designers mind work and also the mind of one of the worlds most renown designer Philipe Starck.

The show gives an insight of the design ethics and concept of Starcks mind, talking in his French voice that I find very appealing he says " we're not here to talk about trends,style, fashion. We shall try to help your tribe, society, your civilisation to a better life"

We can take his view and blend it with our own concept, so that from now on every product that we design is designed to help and contribute to a better life.

One of the challenges in the show present the contestant to choose products from a supermarket that represents certain theme to them. During this scene it mentions that Starck believes that the design industry is awash with too many product " too many pointless product- many shouldn't even exist" and he focuses by saying that " tomollow will be less, we must have less and less product."

It is true that today if you enter the supermarket your hit with hundreds and hundreds of diffrent product, some more usefull and useless than others and yes some of them as Starck mentions " doesn't want believe to exist."

We us the future of designer need to focus more on our product about the function of it ( is it really worth producing it- whats the benefit of it, negative of it) and its sustainability.

We need to focus on "the story behind the product" to make our product that we design to have meaning and uniqueness to add to the world and not to the its landfill.

But then his concept is very conflincting and confuses me. As one of the ethics Starks talks about child labour and the environment and another he ordered military trucks to escort the contestant to the shopping center, he believes the military truck is an eg of simplicity, "the only vehicle not driven by marketing and by function". But does he not realise the enviromental damage that the moster engines in those trucks are causing to the environment? In which point does the cost of function surpass those of importance in saving the environment?