What is Good Design Now?

This months issue of Metropolis Magazine is a special product issue titled What is Good Design Now?. We were happy to see our Sami Nerenberg quoted in the Products for a New Age article (p.96-99). When asked about her recent studio Design for Social Entrepreneurship at RISD Sami said:

"There is a real hunger to work on these projects. Two years ago I was part of a minority at RISD interested in these issues. Today students are looking at our economy, looking at where consumerism has led us. They want to shift away from producing excess and do something that makes them feel useful."

It was also cool to see (in the same article) the Baby Incubator by Design that Matters that James worked on with Mike Hahn while at RISD. See his contribution on the Grain website here.

Sami Nerenberg to teach new RISD studio: Design for Social Entrepreneurship!

The Rhode Island School of Design has asked our Sami Nerenberg to develop and teach a new course in RISD's industrial design department! Her answer? An innovative new senior studio: Design for Social Entrepreneurship. Reading the course description (below) it sounds like it will be an amazing and inspirational experience for the lucky RISD students who get to take her class. Makes me want to go back to school! We'll keep you posted as the course develops.

Design for Social Entrepreneurship (DeSE)
RISD Fall '08

A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. This course aims to cultivate social entrepreneurial designers by investigating the power of product, system and service design to create positive social and environmental change. Looking at both international and domestic issues, this course asks, how can design and design thinking be used to solve the world’s leading problems to achieve triple bottom line sustainability—environmentally, socially, and economically? Structured around holistic thinking, collaborative and individual design work, with mentorship from experts in the field, this course uncovers how to design products and/or services, wrap a business around it, and create tangible positive impact in our world today.

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