In my opinion every designers should stand for a good cause - no matter what. Everyone from the designer guild should understand, that designers are a major part of the idea of creating a better world.
During my research on designers with strong ethics and social responsibility I found artist Mark Langan, who is a US based designer creating logos for several companies using recycled cardboard to help businesses communicate their sustainable values.
Langan’s day-to-day job consists of searching around his neighbour for the recyclable material and bringing tons of it to his Ohio studio for an afternoon
of sorting, cutting, shredding and gluing. Langan creates recycled art for Kellogg’s, Corrugated Service Inc., and The Green Dream, amongst other companies and organizations. He doesn’t use computers to sketch the work – just paper and a pencil. After carefully shredding, cutting and creating layers of the material, he sticks his art together with a water-based glue, making the most from recycled cardboard’s beautiful grooves and textures.
Another good cause led to reality by
Philips and
Oasis International. They united partnered together to make clean, filtered water available everywhere. Recently Philips researched a system called
InstantTrust UV water disinfection system, that cleans drinking water instantly and will be implemented in most of Oasis water dispensing products.
Known for their energy efficient lighting designs, Philips is bringing UV technology to the water world. This particular innovation can instantly disinfect water regardless of temperature, producing clean hot and cold aqua in a snap. Designed to infiltrate the point-of-use water systems around the world, including office and school water coolers, taps, drinking fountains, and portable systems, the InstantTrust’s compact design can fit just about anywhere. While public and home water systems are the first step, OASIS and Philips plan to use this technology on an enormous scale, cleaning millions of gallons of water at a time, worldwide.
I think, that researches and products like this can really raise the awareness on the fact, that we are not just by ourselves on this planet, but sharing it, and reusing resources and designing a new way of living and thinking is a key ingredient to our future wellbeing here. The design approach of Mark Langan is very simple, but strong as an idea - he is a designer not participating in a big organization, but still he has found a way to raise his voice through his design, while big companies like Phillips are making tons of production, but still have a strong social responsibility and are designing a solution for such a global problem like polluted drinking water. Of course there are many more designers and companies going green and designing new ways for solving problems, that we should be glad, that this is not just a voice in a desert.
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Langan's work looks fantastic! Should see that on live.
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