Blog Assignment Week 12

What kinds of political or ideological messages inform design or

the branding of design today? Identify one example and

describe in what ways it expresses larger cultural, political, or

ideological beliefs.

Recently the design world, mainly in advertising and product design has been focused on eco-design. The world has been flung into some kind of apocalypse frenzy where the world is going to end if nothing gets changed. The problem is that nothing is getting changed.

If we look at major companies like Nike and Puma Footwear, they seem to only be changing their eco viewpoint to please customers. As soon as this global issue of global warming sprung up in 2005, and globalized by 'An Inconvenient Truth', companies were quick to jump on the bandwagon of eco-design.

These ideological ideas were quickly adapted into the advertising world. For example, the Puma Clever Little Box, shown below, is a new show box designed by Puma to be as eco-friendly as possible. The box uses 65% less cardboard then a regular shoe box, aswell as doubling as a reusable carrier bag. I have no problem with this, in fact it's good to see a company actually trying to make a difference. I do, however, have a problem with the way it's advertised.

It seems that this box was not, initially, designed for the consumer's use. The box is incredibly useless at being a shoebox, so much that I would prefer a normal shoe box. The entire box is covered with advertising. Not advertising for the products inside but for how eco-friendly it is. This pisses me off. It's obvious that these are only there for the company to show off to its consumers, saying 'hey, look at how awesome and eco-friendly we are!'

It is advertising like this that clearly shows how political and ideological messages are informing design or the branding of design today. 

Figure 1, An Inconvenient Truth Poster. Retrieved from: http://slapnose.com/images/blog/0606/0606-inconvenient-truth.jpg

Figure 2. Puma Clever Little Shoe Box. Retrieved from: http://inhabitat.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2010/04/puma-clever-little-bag.jpg