Designhelps

Those who have power also have responsibility. The power of designers is to decide about function, material and production methods, to inform and to create needs. Therein lies also a cultural, social and ecological responsibility. This is the starting point for Bjørn Küenzlen’s “Designhelps” to analyze the tension between design and responsibility over the last 150 years, which shows that design – despite growing consumer criticism – is still primarily a tool of industry. But there are promising approaches and pioneers for a new understanding of design characterised by responsibility. What distinguishes this global design? Where are its opportunities? In which areas is it already being successfully practiced? In “Designhelps,” Küenzlen presents possible applications, especially in ecologically and socially effective areas that have been neglected in design until now, but which open up new, meaningful challenges for committed designers.

Bjørn Küenzlen, born 1981 in Bietigheim, studied communication design at Merz Akademie Stuttgart and graduated in 2006 with a Master of Arts in European Media.