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PRATIMA MANI VOLUME V. Faculty: Julia Wargaski Thesis 1. Fall 2011. 10/17/11 Upload

Pratima Mani - Thesis - Sustainibility and Whimsy

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Thesis Presentation Faculty: Julia Wargaski

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Page 1: Pratima Mani - Thesis - Sustainibility and Whimsy

PRATIMA MANI

VOLUME V.

Faculty: Julia Wargaski

Thesis 1. Fall 2011. 10/17/11 Upload

Page 2: Pratima Mani - Thesis - Sustainibility and Whimsy

PART I: INTRODUCTIONS ARE IN ORDER

THESIS

PRATIMA MANI

VOLUME V.

Page 3: Pratima Mani - Thesis - Sustainibility and Whimsy

CONCEPTS BEING EXPLORED:Sustainibility. DisposalConsumption. Planned obsolescence

MEDIUMS BEING EXPLORED:Short documentaryBooks (fairy tale format)Environmental design (spatial graphics)

AIMS: To make people aware of the reali-ties of planned obsolescene, and the true costs of product usage. To re-brand sustainibility and ex-plain that it doesn’t entail reduced consumption or a regress in the quality of life. People can still con-sume and be sustainible.

TARGET AUDIENCE: Roughly 15-60 years. Those who have purchasing power and dispos-able income and who are not in-grained with a ‘durability’ mindset.

I arrived at my thesis topic concepts by trying to find an intersection between the three seemingly opposing streams of design I was interested in. On one hand I liked very beutiful, aesthetically pleasing, ornate typography and baroque painting, on the other I liked design with witty, clever and funny concepts and use of visual puns at the same time, I liked design which had a social aspect and had a practical applica-tion in the real world beyond ‘looking cool’ and winning design awards.

I began with the social corner of this design triangle by choosing the idea of sustian-ibility, in particular trying to look at people’s relationship to objects and the frequency with which we churn out and throw away crap. I chose this area of design firstly because I wanted to create something which might encourage people to dispose less and secondly because, as a print student, I feel the fairly traditional graphic design education we’ve had has not prepared us to be sustainable designers. Where does sustainibility lie in a realm like print design which is, in many ways, fundamentally resource-instensive and detrimental to the environment? I decided I wanted to cre-ate a piece of print design that was that much more engaging, enabling and educa-tional to make up for it’s envronmental toll.

The exciting part of the project has now begun because it involves exploring how I can combine ‘serious’ subject matter and data with more whimsical, humorous and engaging forms of stortytelling delivery to create a designed piece that can talk to people (and inform them) about issues like disposal and our attitudes towards con-sumption, without becoming didactic or preachy.

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PART II: RESEARCH

THESIS

PRATIMA MANI

VOLUME V.

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BOOKS:STORY OF STUFFAnnie Leonard

BUY-OLOYMartin Lindstrom

MADE TO BREAK: TECHNOLOGY AND OBSOLESCENCE IN NORTH AMERICAGiles Slade

EMOTIONALLY DURABLE DESIGNJohnathan Chapman

WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS: THE RISE OF COLLABORATIVE CON-SUMPTIONRachel Botsam and Roo Rogers

INTERVIEWS:CAMERON TONKINWISE(Chair, Design Thinking and Sustainabil-ity, School of Design Strategies, Parsons)

ADAM ALTER (Marketing professor, stern nyu)

ARTICLES:I begain reading basic newspaper ar-ticles on planned obsolescence and am now examining acadmic journal articles from business journals which examine how eco-conciousness factors into con-sumer behaviour and how much of an effect it truly has.

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INTERVIEW SUMMARY:CAMERON TONKINWISE

SUBJECTS DISCUSSED:Probems with current cosumption modelUsership vs. ownership Closed loop systems in which resources are infinitely re-salvaged and re-used

MAIN POINTS: People have lots of possessions because it allows them to be free, self-reliant and autonomous. They value the ability to not have to interact with and rely on others (social interaction) to get on with their lives

Changing models must involve internal-izing the true costs of production and disposal

Two ways to solve the problem are:1) Product life extension2) Closed loop sytems where products can be infinitely re-used.

INTERVIEW SUMMARY:ADAM ALTER

SUBJECTS DISCUSSED:Consumer attitudes toward and percep-tions of sustainible or green productsThe value of durabilityPossible stigmas associated with re-use, repair, re-purposement Green psychology/ green marketing

MAIN POINTS:People like new objects because there is an upwards trjectory ie. newer models entail consistant improvement of prod-ucts whereas repairing can only ever restore a product to it’s original state

People like new products because they like the idea that it has no previous stamp of ownership on it. They write the product history themselves from scratch

People buy things with branding that they identify with (even simple, everyday, household goods) providing they are not dealing with commodities.

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PART III: MINDMAPS (ESTABLISHIBING FOCAL POINTS BASED ON RESEARCH)

THESIS

PRATIMA MANI

VOLUME V.

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TYPES OF PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

NOTIFICATION OBSOLESECENCE

PERCIEVED/ AESTHETIC OBSOLESCENCE

PRODUCT OBSOLESCENCE-LIMITED REPAIR-ACCELERATED DEPLETION COMPATIBILITY OBSOLESCENCE

SUPPORT OBSOLESCENCE

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- NECESSARY TO GENERATE DEMAND AND THUS GENERATE GROWTH. NECESSARY TO A HEALTHY ECONOMY. GENERATES A COMPETITIVE MARKET

- BUSINESSES ARE RESPONSIBLE TO INVESTORS. THEY HAVE TO DO WHAT MAKES THE MOST MONEY

-NECESSARY FOR INNOVA-TION. EXTRA SALES REVENUE FUNDS RESEARCH&DEVELOP.

-OFTEN NECESSARY IN ELECTRONICS TO GUARD AGAINST MALWARE THAT PREVIOUS VERSIONS WERE SUSCEPTIBLE TO

- LOWER COSTS FOR COSUMERS (CHEAPER COMPO-NETNS USED)

- DAMAGES ENVIRONMENT, WASTES RAW MATERIALS

-HARMFUL TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

-INSINCERE TO CONSUMERS

-NOT TRULY CONDUCIVE TO INNOVATION. COMPANIES DELIBERATELY HOLD BACK ON RELEASING ADVANCED PROD-UCTS THAT THEY’VE ALREADY RELEASED

- MORE DURABLE GOODS = MORE USED MARKETS. BETTER FOR CONSUMER-

PROS/CONS OF PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

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OTHER FACTS ABOUT PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE

DEPENDENT ON BRAND LOYALTY

MUST BE INTEGRATED AT PRODUCT INCEPTION

RISKY IN COMPETITIVE MARKETS

MUST BE SYSTEM WIDE

‘VOLUNTARY’ OBSOLESCENCE IS MORE POWERFUL THAN ‘FORCED’ OSBSOLESECNCE.

DURABILIY NOT MA-JOR CONCERN FOR PURCHASERS

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IDEAS ABOUT ENGAG-ING AND EMOTIONALLY

DURABLE DESIGN

People fear sustainibility = regression/ sacrificing of com-forts

Disposal happens when we change but the object stays the same, thus ceasing to reflect us.

Sustainibility is an overused/ thrown-around conept. It is losing impact.

Objects are metaphors. Objects are symbolsA laptop IS harware and softwareA laptop MEANS freedom, independence, organization, infor-mation control

Objects are reflections of ourselves. We choose objects based on what we think they say about us/ the person we aspire to be

ALL consumption is duelled by need. Only sometimes it is a social, ego, self-actulalzing need, a need to stand out or fit in. There are usually very human reasons why we consume.

Objects are durable. Our desire for them is not. This results in extinction of meaning and discard-ment.

TEDDY BEAR FACTOR: When users imprint their mark on an object over time, it becomes irreplaceable. Objects must engage users for long enough and also allow room for them to make their mark on it.

Objects should have layers of mean-ing that reveal themselves over time to keep the user hooked. eg. like in the 1001 nights stories.

Sustainibility too often focuses on curing symp-toms and not educating people about causes

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DESIGN GOALS

Marketing sustainibility effectively: ie. Not preaching

Cradle-to-cradle design. What happens when it is used up?Interactive/Engaging

Educational/Enabling

Storytelling. Humor. Cleverness. Wit.

Adaptable design. Can be relevant indefinitely.

Makes the user invest emotionally in the designed piece

User is co-author. Has a hand in con-tributing to the design piece

Unpreictable/ Mysterious. Designed piece reveals new things over time.

IS NOT A TEN-STEP GUIDE. Talks to consum-ers about ideas and facts but is about com-munication of ideas, not a bullet point list of how to recycle.

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DESIGN DIRECTIONS

ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN (spatial graphics)

BOOK/ FAIRY TALE

DOCUMENTARY

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PART IV: INFLUENCES

THESIS

PRATIMA MANI

VOLUME V.

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“The wolf said, “You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone. Red Riding Hood said, “I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to de-velop your own, entirely valid, worldview. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be on my way.” ”

“And God saw the light and it was good; He saw the quarterly bill and that was not good.”

“...(Here comes the next catastrophe.)Most educated people chooseTo rid themselves of socks and shoesBefore they clamber into bed.But Goldie didn’t give a shred.Her filthy shoes were thick with grime,And mud and mush and slush and slime.Worse still, upon the heel of oneWas something that a dog had done.”

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Aubergine waits patiently for his absence to be noted

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Loose arrangement.A book in a box that obliges readers to interact. Also available as a hectic appPublished on Thursday, 29 September, 2011 | 2:17 pm

Publisher Visual Editions has established a reputation for publishing titles that exploit the benefits of the books’ visual and physical elements over their digital counterparts (see ‘A nose for type’, in Eye 77 about Apfel’s design for The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentle-man). All the publications on VE’s list, both published and proposed, are titles that play with the expected form of the book, writes Alexander Ecob.

Composition No.1’s single sheets can be read in any order. Readers are invited to shuffle and select the unbound pages, defining the narrative for themselves. The text is printed on standard book stock (perhaps too thin for the shuffling required), and each page is backed with a generative illustration that uses every word from the book.

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Urban Land Project

Tim Simmons’ images compel viewers to reconsider the notion of “landscape.” Fo-cusing on the innate texture and detail of the land, he sets out to draw audiences deeper into it. Several of his photos were recently displayed in large-scale

format along the arteries of Los Ange-les and Philadelphia in a commission entitled Urban Land Project. Each city af-forded a unique perspective of his work, compelling passersby to reflect and reconnect with their surroundings.

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PART V: IDEAS/ INITIAL PROPOSALS

THESIS

PRATIMA MANI

VOLUME V.

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DESIGN IDEA: BOOKThe tale of a Nokia cellphone that goes on the hunt for an adaptor that will fit it. Stemmed from musings on the common planned obsolescence technique of not making things technologically compat-ible. Every new device needs a host of new chargers.

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DESIGN IDEA: BOOKThe fairy tale that applies the idea of planned obsolescence (and the resulting environmental and financial repurcus-sions) to the traditional fairy tale realm. Here, the princess keeps wanting new combs for her hair, driving her husband into debt and sparking a resource fued in the kingdom. The page background is made of photocopied warranties.

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DESIGN IDEA: ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGNI imagine mass i-pod graves, laptop graves, headphone graves drawn on walls throughout the city. Maybe it could be a hunt of sorts where one grave leads to another? Or a murder mystery where one starts at the grave and has to back-track to find clues about why the object died.

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DESIGN IDEA: DOCUMENTARYA film in which i-pods which have been discarded reveal their life stories. Differ-ent pieces of technology talk about what they know/ have heard about planned obsolescence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JQT4-Zt3kU

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DESIGN IDEA: BOOKPotential form for the fairy tale and the tale of the cellphone listed earlier. A book focused in form on being emotion-ally durable. The book looks like a fairy tale when read normally, but then the pages can un-bound to reveal hidden fold outs and additonal stories.

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END