Qatar is amazing, good food, clean, really good service and i like the skyscrapers =P
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Qatar, part I
I've come to visit some family in Qatar for the holidays, I'm absolutly amazed by the middleeastern culture.
on my first day I've already come in contact with soo many things that or completly diferent towhat we are used in the west, the lettering is absolutly fascinating, especially the way they convert the western company logos to the arabic script.
I thought their customs would bother me a lot more, but i realize that some things are just so caracteristic to a certain people that it would be impossible to break away from. I visited one of the arabic families in the area, that obey all the traditional social conduct and it's not very hard to understand why, the same way we do certain things without thinking twice or questioning the morality of it.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Sunday, December 06, 2009
"We cannot not change the world"
Nestes últimos tempos tenho pensado bastante nos excessos, na ecologia e na nossa responsabilidade pela escassez dos recursos naturais. Existe uma frase que me vem constantemente à mente: "think more, Design Less" da Ellen Lupton, acho que não só se aplica ao Design mas a toda a sociedade dos excessos.
Precisamos urgentemente de voltar ao básico, mas isso não é assim tão fácil! Tudo que nós possuímos tem um prazo de validade cada vez mais curto, os produtos que adquirimos são feitos para serem substituídos num prazo de um ano ou dois. Já não se fazem objectos que duram a vida inteira, como os vários electrodomésticos que os meus avós ainda usam todos os dias.
Talvez não seja necessário voltar ao básico para sobrevivermos, mas sim minimizar os excessos da sociedade do consumo, através do re-design dos objectos importantes e indispensáveis para a nossa sobrevivência no mundo pós-moderno.
Claro que isto é tudo muito bonito, mas é uma utopia. A nossa sociedade depende do constante consumo, o emprego depende do constante consumo, até mudarmos o nosso sistema económico voltar ao básico e sermos menos consumistas nunca vai ser possível.
Deixo este site como sugestão para todos os interessados no Design Social, também foi o sítio onde tirei o vídeo
Vejam também o documentário Objectified e Human Footprint do National Geographic
E criei um wallpaper a propósito, podem ver e fazer o download aqui
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Do we need more things?
As I watched the interesting documentary Objectified (poster on the right), I asked myself: Do we need more things?
Do we really need to create new things to constantly replace something we bought under a year ago? We are all caught in this vicious circle, everything we purchase becomes outdated in less and less time... How can we keep up?
As Christmas is just around the corner I thought about how much we spend every year on gifts, I looked up the statistics and found how much Americans spend at Christmas time (they are one of the biggest consumer societies in the world at the moment) I found out that on black Friday (a weekend after the american's thanksgiving dedicated to Christmas shopping) American's spent $ 41.2 billion!!! considering that the population of the USA is estimated to be 308,056,000...WTF?!
(and acording to the National Retail Federation the amount of money spent is less then what was spent in 2008!)
That's a lot of money! and for what? Is it pure necessity? I don't think so... We are brainwashed into wanting to consume more and more, that we NEED a new this and a new that... Imagine what that money could do for people in other parts of the world that don't even have the essential to survive!
What happened to "it's the thought that counts?"
I do however feel guilty for accusing people of overspending, as I myself am a consumer like everybody else, but we should start rethinking our lives at a time like this, go back to the basics... Together we can make a change
Statistics at: National Retail Federation
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