4 things a week: paradox's and power shifts

This week I've been reading the fantastic book Waste Age by the Design Museum , and reading Economist articles about the economic rise of the worlds two most populous countries.

Innovation

Jevon’s paradox was first used to describe the curious outcome of coal powdered machines becoming more efficient. Whilst you might expect that as efficiency increased, coal consumption may decrease, what was actually happening was that as machines became more efficient, coal consumption went up. People just ran more and bigger machines. This paradox is also true for electronics. If a designer or engineers find ways to reduce, say, the lithium required in the manufacture of a battery without compromising performance, the demand for the batteries will increase and therefore we will, in aggregate, be mining more lithium, not less.

By this rationale, we need to focus not on doing less bad, not on incremental improvements in efficiency or reduction in a particularly bad raw material. Instead, if we are to really start thinking about long term sustainability, we need to take a much more radical approach. We need to seek alternatives to fundamentally harmful and environmentally damaging raw materials rather than just reducing the need for them. But not just that, we need to challenge the system that requires the constant need for the manufacture of new products in the first place.?

I’m aware that making a statement without offering a suggestion as to how we do this is not particularly helpful, but I think it’s important that we challenge the generally accepted perspective the improving the efficiency of something is good for the planet. What do you think?

World

To date, the size of a countries population hasn’t typically correlated with its economic strength. Smaller populations such as the UK and France have had amongst the strongest economies because of their highly productive, high skilled labour force and advanced technology, despite their relatively low population.?

However, when two countries are equally developed, then the population size does make a difference. The exponential development of China, particularly in technology and innovation over the past 20 years puts them on course to overtake the U.S in the next decade. India has been slightly slower to hit exponential growth, but they are also predicted to overtake the U.S. economy, certainly in my lifetime.?

I don’t think is new news to many of you. But I’m curious as to what this means for design. We have worked with Chinese suppliers wanting to create products with a design that appeals to ‘Western’ customers. Europeans and Americans. They still believe that being able to sell into these countries is something to aim for.? Soon, when the Asian market is reaching a similar level of affluency and far surpasses the ‘West’ in terms of size, I can’t imagine they'll have much need to seek out a UK design firm for creative input.

Inspiration

I’ve been judging the D&AD Awards this year and perhaps it’s that Product Design entrants are now required to outline their environmental considerations, or perhaps brands are finally waking up to the fact that they cannot just make stuff for the sake of it any more. Either way, there has been some really wonderful projects and I’m looking forward to sharing more about these in May.

More excitingly however, the D&AD Festival is only a couple of weeks away and I have to say, the programme looks awesome. I’ll be running a session on the Wednesday 22nd May titled ‘Designing our way to a sustainable future’ which you are all welcome to come to, but I strongly recommend you check out what’s going on over the two days and look to get yourself or one of your team a pass.

Morrama

Seeing a new product launch take off and be successful will always be immensely satisfying. However, being able to update the design and make improvements based on learnings is even better. When we created the packaging for the Wild deodorant back in 2019, our priority was getting something to market. 4 years later we are proud to finally be able to discuss the design process of the Wild case V2.0.?

The redesign focuses on three key things; being able to use up all the deodorant, user experience and sustainability.?

Most excitingly, we reduced materials and ensured that every part of the case could be disassembled to recapture materials at end-of-life. The most important aspect of this was removing glue and permanent assembly features. Yes, there are snap fixings to aid a quick and foolproof assembly, but instead of hiding them we have put them on show. Making a feature of them, also means that they can be un-done, ‘un-snapped’ if you will, meaning that aluminium and plastic parts can be separated without the need for a special tool. In fact - a spoon will do!

You can read more about the process and the other changes we made here.

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P.s. Just incase you got to the end of this and aren't sure who I am, I'm:

• an industrial designer (I design and engineer physical objects)
• founder of Morrama | Certified B Corp
• former tutor of Design Futures at the Royal College of Art
• co-instigator of Design Declares