Changed by Design

We were delighted to see Emily Pilloton, founder of Project H Design and author of Design Revolution, appear as a guest on the Colbert Report last night. The highlight of the interview was the rousing response from Pilloton’s call for a new measure of success according to “the triple bottom line: Planet, People and Profit”.

Pilloton chose excellent visual aids to show Colbert how design can improve lives. Selected from her book, Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People, Colbert walked to the interview table wearing Spider Boots, donned a pair of Adaptive Eyewear, and marveled at Pilloton’s ability to move 200 pounds of water with the ease of a “very, very suspicious flight attendant” using the beloved Hippo Water Roller.

The full episode is below. Sorry for the off-color freeze frame! We didn’t choose it, we promise.
Or to watch just the exact 6 minutes of Pilloton’s interview, view this clip directly on Hulu.

Here is Josh Silver’s 5-minute presentation of the optometrist-free glasses at TEDGlobal 2009 in July. In it, he explains that he is 30,000 on the way to putting glasses in the hands of one billion people by 2020. As with many humanitarian designs, the foremost obstacle he faces is bringing down the $19 cost of each pair. He is an atomic physicist by day, which just goes to show anyone can be a humanitarian designer.

Here’s proof that design will, in fact, save the world. Nothing has done more to spur the world to action than Al Gore’s presentation-turned-movie, An Inconvenient Truth. And what made that presentation so impactful? Duarte Design’s makeover of his presentation slides.

I’d like to experiment with this type of format – instead of wordy blog posts, present mini pecha-kucha-style visual stories about world-changing designs. It will be a lot easier for you to digest, but a lot more work for me. I’m hoping that the extra work I put in makes this blog more unique, useful, and interesting to you.

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