The 10% Club
Cut your product offerings by 10%, says blogger Susan Perry in reaction to trends forecaster Li Edelkoort's recent seminars in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
I went to see the fabulously understated Li Edelkoort at the 2011 Design Indaba, compliments of VISI (thanks Jacquie!). It was an interesting experience in many ways, apart from the obvious one of content.
I’ve come to realise that content in itself is a design form. How presentations are put together, the tools that are used to convey the messages, and the environment in which they’re conveyed are an underrated part of the experience. A slide show is a slide show is a slide show – no matter how relevant the content.
But how interesting would it have been to explore the potential for enhancing that content?
The presentation covered the trends for the next few years and, naturally enough (excuse the pun), it was about the devastation that we’re causing our planet and how this is translating into our everyday attitudes towards consumerism.
We saw birds made out of plastic due to their diet of nothing but plastic, we saw shops designed to look like burnt-out squats, and we saw a fashion shoot where the model resembled one of the many homeless people that huddle on the corners of our streets all over the world.
A new fashion direction is clothing that’s recycled, yes, but which is also deliberately further distressed , ripped, shredded. The discomfort that this caused me emotionally was enormous.
That poverty should be taken on by the fashion and design world, in however a well-meaning way, is not pleasant.
All the time we were watching this, we were in comfortable seats, in an air-conditioned theatre. I looked around at the audience and it was full of well-meaning individuals, many of whom had the power to make significant changes in how they do business – and we’re not talking SMEs but SA’s corporate leaders in both the retail and design world.
Why not, over the course of the presentation, turn up the heating to the point where we’re more than slightly uncomfortable to demonstrate how we’ll feel for the majority of our lives in the future if we continue on our current course of planetary devastation? Why not use the opportunity to ask each member of the audience to bring along an item of clothing as a donation to our homeless?
A real call to action
Most significantly, in the opening to the talk, Li pointed out the benefits, both to our environment and to our business bottom lines, of reducing our product offerings by 10 percent. Now there was a moment. There was an opportunity for a real call to action.
I believe that had it been asked for, at the end of that talk, the corporate sponsor Woolworths could have taken the challenge and taken most of the business leaders in that room along with them. “We pledge to reduce by 10 percent. Who’s with us?” In a spell-binding moment of high drama, we could, at a stroke, have done something real.
But we were allowed to clap, rise and walk away, nodding our heads and perhaps feeling complacent that at least our design thoughts and principles are on trend. Indeed, The Modern Garden Company and The Modern Home Company are already stocking some of the products that were shown on the slides as the direction that design is taking. So, we’re alright.
I can only hope that others who were there felt the same discomfort and are taking it seriously. I pledge to reduce my 10 percent. Who’s with me?
About Susan:
Owner of The Modern Garden Company and The Modern Home Company, Susan Perry loves good design, beautiful buildings, and stealing sweets from her 8 year old daughter’s party packs. With background studies in Drama and 3D and Spatial Design, Susan’s aim is to create layered yet cohesive offerings for environments in which people can live with maximum comfort and flair, but minimum effort. www.moderngarden.co.za
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