Design

what is design?
there are several definitions for design: 

1. A plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is made.

2. A decorative pattern.

3. Purpose or planning that exists behind an action, fact, or object

4. Decide upon the look and functioning of (a building, garment, or other object), by making a detailed drawing of it

In today's society the term design is widely associated with applied arts, this is partly because both cover a large list of applications muddling the boundaries between the two and making them blurred.

Whilst researching design I came across this RSA talk from Alice Rawsthorn discussing design and its powerful and persuasive influence over our lives.
     https://www.thersa.org/discover/audio/2013/03/design-and-society/
     http://rsalive.blob.core.windows.net/mp3s/20130318AliceRawsthorn.mp3
In this talk Alice mentions about how designers have a responsibility to use design to do good due to its large effects over all of us and how society doesn't always realise the impact it is having on us.

What is a designer?

Traditionally design consisted of three main areas which were, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture and these areas were know as the major arts.
Today these classical areas have undergone development and have become subdivided into many more areas of specialist and refined study.

Sustainability 

What is sustainability? 

Sustainability is the survival of a system, a sustainable system will survive for a long period whereas an un-sustainable system will not. Recently sustainability has become prominent, with sustainable development being considered for everything from ecology to economics, politics and culture. The research of this is called sustainability science which is the investigation of sustainable development and analysis of environmental science.

What is sustainable development?

Sustainable development seeks to change the impact we as the human race have on this earth. It aims reduce the negative impact we have had and turn it into a positive one. From an ecologist point of view this is reduction in damage to the environment and can be achieved by making chemical processes more environmentally friendly and managing the processes and resources that are not. It is also achieved by protecting the environment with conservation studies. 

As sustainable development leads us towards sustainability our social environment also comes under scrutiny and undergoes change. This is a challenge for society as it can bring about changes to laws and affects how councils organise transport and plan urban development. It also begins to question peoples lifestyles as society and individuals change habits to become more "ethical consumers"

Whilst researching sustainability I came across these website for information.

http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/basicinfo.htm

this website had a good definition for sustainability and clearly indicated what was needed for us to become sustainable.

https://www.gov.uk/search?q=sustainability

This search of the gov.uk website lead me to many useful links for sustainable development, from finding sustainable suppliers, and schemes for people to follow, to laws and  job opportunities in sustainable development.

http://footprint.wwf.org.uk

I also came across this website for checking our footprint and seeing our own individual impact on the earth, I found that if everyone lived like I do then we would need 1.94 planets to be sustainable, obviously we only have the one. What I found good about this website was that it not only used your own information to generate an idea of your individual sustainability but after completion the option was there to sign up and get tips on how to reduce this. After only a couple of minutes I had managed to tick of some actions that were appropriate to me and pledged to try some small changes to my current routine and reduced the footprint from 1.94 planets to 1.69. Although this is still high it is on the right track to making a difference. The tips were mainly small but useful things that are easily overlooked but all added together make a difference. 

This demonstrated to me that achieving a sustainable world to live in is not the job of scientists or those in control but relies on adding up the small differences that we can all make.

I also used this video from Green Uclan http://vls.uclan.ac.uk/Play/6361 this reinforced information I had already found about small changes that can be made to reduce environmental impact.
http://www.davidsuzuki.org