Sustainability

Tony Fry notes that even though products that may be cheap to produce and sell from a monitory point of view (such as many computers) their actual costs are quite high when the pollution, disposal and other associated attributes are taken in to consideration. As Tony states, design is never finished, what ever the design is, it keeps on designing its state of being throughout its life cycle.

A lot of my work is web site design, which to an extent is environmentally friendly, as it’s a method of mass communication that doesn’t require large print runs, and the disposal of the work is simply a matter of deleting it. However even these jobs have sustainability concerns, for example the power source which runs the computer hardware may or may not be from a sustainable source, and the actual computer that hosts the website may have large costs when it comes to pollution and disposal.It is nice to find a design studio that supports sustainability in what they produce.

Thomas Matthews is a relatively small design studio in London that creates some fantastic work and have an established design philosophy that supports sustainability. Design is integrated with community; it shapes the artificial environment and contributes to the well being of humans. It is therefore essential that designers consider sustainable solutions.