" Design for life " from my point of view

Design for life was for me personally, a great experience. I did not have the opportunity so far to see a design exhibition that solves real problems that are related to health and the quality of life rather than just personal confort. Another important element was the fact that I had the opportunity to be guided by the curator of the exhibition himself and I could directly ask all my questions. As he mentioned ( which was an utterly important detail ), the exhibition was really well explained: videos, lots of photographs and text, all very well lighted. I agree on that because I could make a comparison between Design for life and the other exhibition held in the same museum, that were sometimes really vague and did not let you, as a viewer, understand the concept behind the product.  The installations were versatile,  thought to match the theme of the exhibition, being modular, so you could actually turn them into something else, carry them easily, so you could basically have good looking units, extremely useful and very cheap. They were thinking even about the process of printing directly on the units, which means reducing the cost of printing on vinyl.

In my opinion it’s really important to come up with a COHERENT exhibition that truthfully respects the general idea, theme and concept of the pieces that you want to exhibit. This also means RESPECT for the designers and their work, but also for the people that are going to use the products. Regarding this exhibition, a key factor was to make also a wake up call for the society: once the viewer sees the design products, they get to know the story behind, so their awareness increases and they can actually get involve in maybe solving some of the problems or at least try to avoid them. We all know that most of the times we are responsible for what is happening to us, good or bad, so by being more conscious about the decisions we have to make is a good begining. In this sense, I see the exhibition as a cornerstone in solving some of the actual and future problems.

All in all, the person gathering the team of designers and their products made a big step, the designers that were really involved in the process constructed the path and the viewer can actually follow the path and together they can continue the journey towards a better future. This is what Design for life made me experience along with the wish to go back and allocate more time to each of the products exhibited.