Product Description

Major issues such as pollution, deforestation, species loss and global warming are all side-effects of the activities that provide consumers with the endless array of goods on the market today. Designers and discerning customers are starting to look beyond the surface, recognising that while a product might look beautiful, it can't really represent the pinnacle of mankind's genius if it is made using polluting methods or by exploiting workers. This book reveals that, far from hampering creativity, taking stock of environmental issues can produce designs of "total beauty". The author examines a diverse range of products from lipsticks to cars using icons and a scoring system to assess their "sustainability".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #544335 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Customer Reviews

Sustainable products for laments
Don't expect answers here regarding how to design a product that is green and sustainable.

The author here is trying to discuss the beauty of sustainable product and green products. At the beginning of the book is the marking scheme which the title uses throughout to mark the examples under those categories. Within this title, the author shows example of products from Sony table speakers to muesli cereal and marking these under its recycle-ability, solar influences, efficiency of materials used and safety & social (user ability. The first half of the book explains what all these mean and how these will then be used later on in the book.

However, the information regarding the examples is not very good. The author is making comparisons with his marking agenda rather than a general discussions. I bought this book to inspire me when I am designing products taking into account sustainability and yet maintaining the original aesthetics of the products. Unfortunately there is not much inspirations that can be taken from this book.

This title could have been better if the author could direct the reader to understand how a product can be designed with sustainability in mind, unfortunately this title does not do that. For the price and content it's not worth the money, unless you are really stuck and you do not know what sustainability is then this book can give you slight insight into a more complex issue. But don't let the author cloud your imagination.

A good book that expresses the art of Product Design
Product design is falsely associated with "drawing", "art", whereas it's much more than that. It deals with manufacturing, marketing techniques, and environment, social and political issues. In this book, you can rediscover Product Design in its purely artistic way. It deals with many kind of products and is quite recent. It'll also give you new ideas about how a product is made.