'Don't make more shit'

'The London Design Festival is a nine-day celebration of design in the world’s creative capital. The Festival is a platform for the widest spectrum of design disciplines, brought together as a unique and accessible programme.'

So once again the London Design Festival has visited and vacated the city, but without failing to provoke the vital and critical reaction of questioning what we see, do, make and say in regards to all things 'design'.

The work from students on the MA Design for Development course at the University of Kingston ensured this all important reaction of questioning WHAT we design and WHY we design it. Design should only exist for a purpose, the purpose being to improve the world we live in, whether by function or by changing behaviour, actions and thinking, it doesn't matter so long as it's not just more crap. I'll never forget what my third year tutor at university once said to our class of pretty clueless product designers during a small grilling one day, 'Don't make more shit!' Short, but definitely crucial. The Kingston MA students had put together a 'thinking wall' for everyone to come up and have their say, the project was a physical extension of their blog design4development.