Catherine Roman

Our modern world is in crisis. Our system of production is literally burying us in goods and waste that do not have significant consumer value. We are destroying our environment, ignoring the plight of billions, and reducing our quality of life. Our designers must change their way of looking at the world and embrace the idea of lightness in order to fix a flawed system and restore a balance of social responsibility, sustainability, humanity, and desirability to the world of design.

The Modern Design World

It is impossible to make the claim that our world is not in the midst of rapid, dramatic change. Just two decades ago the Internet age was just dawning, its promises and implications just hints at what might become. Only a century ago mass communication on a modern scale was inconceivable. This same rapid shift in information and communication has likewise been reflected in the economy and design and production of goods throughout the world. Unfortunately this kind of rapid change has overloaded the system and the business as usual model of life is increasingly being rendered impossible. There are too many people, too many products, too much waste, and too much demand weighing on the world creating problems, which must be addressed quickly via a rapid shift in our collective ideology. We must begin to look at our world and the systems within it in different ways in order to find solutions to the problems that were created due to past design choices. Designers have the capability of changing the world and serving as facilitators of change in order to lighten the load our current systems place on individuals as well as to solve important socio-cultural issues.