This past weekend the students of the Graphic Design program were meant to attend this years Design Thinkers Conference. Unfortunately we weren’t able to get enough students who wanted to go to get a bus. So only a handful of students who could make their own way there were able to attend and I sadly was not one of them. But as a graphic design student I’m a student member of RGD which means I can access member features of their website, such as videos of presentations from previous years Design Thinkers Conferences.
One particular video I would like to talk about is a presentation by David Berman called How to make the entire planet your client. Now if your not a member of RGD you won’t be able to watch the video for yourself but you can check out his website here:
check out his blog and take a look at his portfolio.
Now this is a fairly long video so I’m just going to talk about a few points that I found interesting. One thing he talks about is how designers can use design to save money. He gives this example of ecofonts, thick sans-serif fonts that have white in them, the purpose of which saves ink toner. Another example he gives are these trains in Germany called DB. They were designed in such a way that they are painted with a larger ratio of white to dark, which saved them a ton of money in paint, which paid for the entire design fee.
Another interesting thing he talks about is the four stages of sustainability in design. It looks something like this.
1. Financial = Prosperity
2. Environmental = Planet
3. Social = People
4. Cultural = Design
David Berman happens to be the guy who helped establish these sustainability standards in design, first in Ontario and now spreading throughout the world.
He also talks about how traffic signals can be confusing for people who are colour blind since they can’t really see the difference between green and red. But in Quebec the traffic signals use both shapes and colours which makes them easier to understand if you can’t perceive colour.Here’s an example of a universal traffic light.
David Berman is someone who is very passionate about using design to change the world. He’s got a lot of interesting things to say. Check out his website and find out what he can teach you.
RGD logo and Design thinkers logo are copyright Rgd and come from their website: http://www.rgd.ca
Ecofont image was found on: http://www.christianharries.com/eco-font/
Traffic light image was found on: http://www.yankodesign.com/2010/06/09/re-learning-the-traffic-lights/
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