Critical Debates in Design - task 6 : Product packaging

Packaging design serves to protect, store and transport goods and is the means by which the marketing strategy for a consumer brand is visually communicated. However, packaging is an environmental problem because the materials that make it are often from limited resources (like oil which is used to make plastic, or trees that are turned into cardboard and sometimes not replaced with new trees), and once it’s used, packaging tends to end up on landfill sites rather than being recycled.

Packaging designers are the design professionals that understand how to connect form and structure, materials, color, imagery, typography and ancillary design elements with product information to create a marketable design for a consumer product.


Anyhow, it’s important for designer to look at the impact that company’s packaging products have on the planet by using less material, shipping with smaller packaging, being free of many toxic substances, and being as energy efficient and recyclable as possible. With every production process, the progress should be done toward minimizing our environmental impact (Green packaging).

Due to the essential of environmental concern, most company consider in reducing the impact their products have on the environment by measuring company's Carbon footprint, which is, a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc.


Furthermore, one of the important informations provided on packaging is Traffic light labelling (on food and drink labels), which is a starting point to help consumers to see how healthy or unhealthy their food or drink is. The traffic light colours tell consumers whether the product has low, medium or high amounts of fat, saturated fat, sugars and salt.

Regarding packaging and labelling, under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations any descriptions of goods you trade must be accurate - it's a criminal offence if they're not.

This applies to both the writing and the illustrations on your packaging and labelling. Among other things, you must not be misleading about:
• quantity or size
• composition
• method of manufacture
• place and date of manufacture
• fitness for stated purpose
• endorsements by people or organisations
The law applies to you if you sell goods to the public or manufacture goods.

Origin marking
In most circumstances, there is no legal requirement in the UK or anywhere else in the European Union for goods to be marked with an indication of their origin-but you can do so if you wish. However, if you do, the origin markings must be accurate or you will be committing a criminal offence under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations.

Pricing
It is also an offence to give consumers a misleading price indication about goods and services, including immoveable property, rights and obligations.

Business for design II

Critical Debates in Design - task 5 : Ethics

Tibor Kalman
He was an influential American graphic designer of Hungarian origin, well-known for his work as editor-in-chief of Colors magazine.

Colors Magazine: Established in 1991 under the editorship of Tibor Kalman, with the premise that diversity is positive and all cultures have equal value, COLORS is part of the publishing activity of Fabrica, Benetton's communication research centre. COLORS' editorial offices are located in Fabrica's architectural complex, which was restored and enlarged by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. COLORS has a network of collaborators in the four corners of the Earth.



Stefan Sagmeister
He’s Stefan Sagmeister, a superhero to many in the design world (even though he prefers not to be seen this way). He can convince clients to take creative risks that leave the rest of us awestruck. He employs guts in his work and gets endless publicity for his most shocking and provocative designs. Young designers everywhere revere him.



But with great power comes great responsibility, and he is attempting to bring a sense of humanity back to design and remind us of our individual power as designers—all by asking us one simple question: Can design touch someone’s heart? To get things rolling, he has turned the question into a course he is teaching at design schools in New York City and Berlin, including the School of Visual Arts (SVA), the Cooper Union and the Universität der Küenste.

Stefan’s question has inspired me to take a closer look not only at Stefan as a thoughtful designer and teacher, but at what my own design work is accomplishing (or not accomplishing).

Critical Debates in Design - task 4 : CSR

This billboard for South African Nedbank actually has solar panels on it that generate electricity for the kitchens of a neighboring elementary school. Meanwhile, most companies talk about their social responsibility programmes but this powerful message shows it in action and emphasises Nedbank's by-line - "make things happen".

I also believe that design can do more than sell products for clients and it can play a bigger role in solving societal problems.

Critical Debates in Design - task 3 : Animation

The pioneers of animation include Winsor McCay of the United States and Emile Cohl and Georges Melies of France. Some consider McCay's Sinking of the Lusitania from 1918 as the first animated feature film.

Early animations, which started appearing before 1910, consisted of simple drawings photographed one at a time. It was extremely labor intensive as there were literally hundreds of drawings per minute of film. The development of celluloid around 1913 quickly made animation easier to manage. Instead of numerous drawings, the animator now could make a complex background and/or foreground and sandwich moving characters in between several other pieces of celluloid, which is transparent except for where drawings are painted on it. This made it unnecessary to repeatedly draw the background as it remained static and only the characters moved. It also created an illusion of depth, especially if foreground elements were placed in the frames.

Walt Disney took animation to a new level. He was the first animator to add sound to his movie cartoons with the premiere of Steamboat Willie in 1928. In 1937, he produced the first full length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

With the introduction of computers, animation took on a whole new meaning. Many feature films of today had animation incorporated into them for special effects. A film like Star Wars by George Lucas would rely heavily on computer animation for many of its special effects. Toy Story, produced by Walt Disney Productions and Pixar Animation Studios, became the first full length feature film animated entirely on computers when it was released in 1995.

Avatar was a movie which has virtually changed the face of the movie world. The film used cutting edge animation technology which gave the characters a more lifelike feel and most of all used a very advanced form of 3d animation.

This is where avatar innovated the movie industry. The film did not try and capture the audience's attention by showing off the power of the three dimensional capability but rather worked the element into the move subtly to enhance things like flying fight scenes. This made it so that the audience essentially forgot about the 3d dimension and was simply better immersed into the film.

This type of technology has been so popular that most of the major television manufacturers are scrambling to make televisions which can support the new media format.

In the future, the animation industry is about to take another leap forward in the development quality realistic images and animation, however, the content or the story is still more important than technology.

Critical Debates in Design - task 2 : Sign system

Pentagram’s Paula Scher has designed graphics for a Midtown Manhattan garage that make sure drivers never forget where the car is.

Signage as backseat driver: typography throughout the building directs drivers what to do and where to go.

Supergraphics are installed on the elevator doors.

In Scher’s original concept, she wanted to fill the windows of the non-descript structure with the question “Did You Remember Where We Parked the Car?” City zoning, however, required more traditional signage on the façade, which Scher has rendered in elegant neon. The interior signage acts as a kind of backseat driver as one moves through the garage. Set in Verlag, the typographic pileup includes instructions for drivers—“Slow and steady wins the race,” “Don’t stop here, continue,” etc.—and supergraphics identifying parking levels and elevators.

This is a really stunning sign system idea as being a backseat driver. It can better communicate visually with a driver than just a direction sign (arrow), however, it does work only in a few times then after that people would simply ignore due to its excessive detail when driving.

20 Typefaces