Eric Karjaluoto :: The Culpable Designer

I never have enough time to just think.  I'm not talking about the day to day decision making type of thinking, but I refer here to that relaxed "let's just ponder the universe" type of idle time. I think it is so necessary to take time to be with ones thoughts and yet it seems like such a luxury.

I was inspired to do some thinking tonight after having read another of Eric Karjaluoto's posts at ideasonideas, called The Culpable Designer. I haven't thought a lot about responsible design since my last post on the subject here at ArtLOOK and so I was happy that I came across Eric's very thoughtful post which rather re-awakened the subject for me.  The Culpable Designer touches upon some lofty issues and Eric understands and states that a blog post can't address all the issues which could come up in writing, talking, and thinking about responsible design, but it does open up avenues for dialogue. It does serve to remind us, in the course of our often frantic days, of a issue which is relevant and shouldn't be forgotten. I think as more and more designers begin to think and talk about these issues the more we will begin to insert responsible design practices into our lives.

Eric's post spans discussion from the virgin fiber used in the Victoria's Secret catalogs (really? I had no idea!), to the design of the Third Reich, on to Michael Bierut's When Design Is A Matter of Life or Death to First Things First Manifesto of 1964.  Yup...big ideas and observations and Eric writes about them in a thoughtful and eloquent way. Truly, I love to read his stuff.  I will probably never get a gig with Nike or Victoria's Secret so these thoughts while mindful are moot to me, but what about the little things?  While I encourage you to read The Culpable Designer I also want to ask...What if every design firm, every freelancer, every studio big or small across the world just started to use both sides of the paper coming out of our printers? Perhaps I fear here, as Eric did at ideasonideas, that this question makes light of a topic which is so big. Perhaps it will just be another avenue to open up dialogue...??