Annie Leonard: The Story of Stuff

The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard is a simple yet very illustrative and informative video about the people’s production and consumption patterns. In this video, the portrayal of production and consumption in our world is rather cruel and greedy. The Government and corporation seems cooperating with each other fairly well considering that both parties knew the harm that the present production and consumption process will contribute in the society.

Gathering of resources continues to consume our environment. Cutting trees sounds normal and acceptable for production of certain human resources for living if it’s in controlled manner. However, cutting trees perpetually without any concern in the outcome is definitely unacceptable. Consuming not only the country’s resources but also the third world country’s resources is crossing the boundary. Doing this does not prove anything about someone’s hierarchy in the world but prove how arrogant and insensitive they are.

The use of toxics in production of things is unstoppable and it does not show awareness or concern towards the environment and people. Industrial production system mainly produces toxic products.  As a result, it consumes the environment badly and buying those products also consumes us and our home. For example the Brominated Fire Retardants is mixed during the creation of appliances, computers, mattresses, etc. Meaning staying close to these products is harmful for our health that it causes neural cancer at the worst.

For us industrial designers, awareness is crucial in designing and/or producing things. For the reason being that showing concern can make major impact towards our environment and towards consumers. There are many ways to avoid consuming the world grotesquely like recycling materials and choosing the right or less harmless materials in production of products. For example Fisher price toys are made of industrially harmless materials so the young ones can play with it. Sony Ericsson Co also produced a line of phone consists of recycled plastics which shows sustainability and awareness.      

Story of Stuff is a video that industrial designers, like us, needs to see. It is simple that wakes the senses up to actually see what is happening in production and consumption pattern in the world. Watching this short video warned me and made me raised my awareness about material choices and production practices that I might do in the future. I guess this video implies that there is nothing wrong to consume our environment to produce things as long as we use it while nurturing it at the same time. So we are doing the environment a very good favour in return to what they have given to us. 

Sydney Design - Sketches

My Design Career

Design open up a whole new different and much wider world in to me which is the reason why I want to be an industrial designer. My old vague perception about things is now put in to another level of appreciation. I want to be a designer not to be famous but to contribute towards the world and to express myself though design. Making things that will make peoples life not only easier but also to fulfil their memories with fun experiences is my target goal in designing products now and later in the future.

Art is my first love and one of my greatest best friends. It also encouraged me to do design which is for me, another way to express myself in such a unique manner. Now that I’m doing industrial design, I cannot avoid treating my design works as a delicate piece of artwork and not just a piece of product. I think this is a good thing and practice for the reason being that it makes me more aware in designing things. Furthermore, integrating art into design practice is such a fun thing to do. It pumps that adrenaline in to me to do more and more design imaginations.

Bachelor of Industrial Design is my first preference during year 12 in high school. However, not receiving enough ATAR made me study in another university.  Studying my first year of Bachelor of Industrial Design at another university made me see design as it is. I thought it was exciting and challenging. However, changing to UNSW to study the same course is a whole new different blank canvas. Design practice and teaching in UNSW made me see design as broad spectrum of light that bounces from one thing to another that create this whole new different picture. It actually changed my old simple view point about design. Design appealed to me with much deeper sense. Studying in here made every single bit of work and time input towards it worthwhile. Having all those new experiences and learning under my sleeves made it more special. Having this, what I considered a great experience, gives me humungous amount of motivation in doing design.

Being an Industrial designer will make me progress in life, now and especially in the future. Being one is not easy as well. Living in this era of design, which is jaw dropping, will push me to do better things and compete towards the wider design world. Futuristically, I would like to design and create products that will nurture people’s mind, create a product as a messenger of my own and a product that will make people’s lives. One of my dreams is to own a design firm or if not, a small design store that will also serve as design gallery with my own design works. I cannot really predict my own future in design because of possible hindrances that I will surely encounter later in my life. All I can assure is, as long as I remain motivated, adrenalized, loving what I’m doing and being myself, I would succeed and achieve my plans and goals in design.           

Design Confusion: Car Park Ticket Machine

Design Excellence: Intensity Shuttle 3.0