DesigningWithWaste.com grew out of frustrations with seeing awesome experimental design projects never go beyond a classroom because of a lack of infrastructure. Making matters worse, students often have to reinvent the wheel when they have an experimental design project since the industrial design community lacks a collaborative hub where people can improve upon each others’ recipes.
This is the third part of my Master of Design thesis project. If you have not already, go see the first part, The Cai Modeling Materials, and the second part, Pasta Water for Designers.
While similar material databases exist, they do not allow for a back-and-forth collaboration between designers. DesigningWithWaste.com seeks to address that.
This site uses a minimal color palette and aesthetic in order to leave space for makers to see how experimental materials could fit into their own practices and aesthetics.
Tickers flash through some of the theories that led me to this thesis, topics like planet-centric design. These tickers as a manifesto of sorts. Building a community means bringing people together who share common interests or concerns. By having them informally presented, visitors may feel less of a burden since they do not need to sign-on to a manifesto that they may only agree in part to.
The community aspect of the site comes in two parts. Each part requires a different level of engagement to help reach makers with different needs and interests. The first, a set of hashtags, allows people quickly and easily share their work.
The second method is for designers who have a greater interest in collaboration. Makers can go to the Cai Board and Cai Clay projects on GitHub and suggest improvements or alterations to the Cai recipes and even upload their own recipes. My hope is that this will turn into a truly collaborative space that grows beyond the Cai Modeling Materials.
Just like no one material can replace plastic, no one person can solve the climate crisis and plastic problem.
That is why the main branch of the Designing With Waste GitHub repository is a blank template. Makers can copy this template and input their own recipes. Only by working together will we be able to lessen our negative environmental impact. And by building upon each others’ knowledge, we can make more significant advances in sustainable materials more quickly than if we worked alone. With this template, students, professional designers, and makers of all stripes can freely share their experimental material work with others. And businesses that want to use healthier materials but have been struggling due to a lack of resources can use the recipes provided here as a starting point for less harmful manufacturing.
Have you worked on experimental design projects that you’re willing to share? Please share them on the Designing With Waste GitHub repository. And if you teach classes grounded in experimental design, please consider directing your students to the Designing With Waste repository. This way, your students can build off the knowledge of other makers so that they can make more significant advances with their experiments, rather than having to start from square one.
Pasta Water for Designers is the second of four parts of my Master of Design thesis.
See part one, The Cai Modeling Materials.
See part two, Pasta Water for Designers.
See part four, Criteria for Planet-Centric Design for an excerpt from my written thesis and a full bibliography.
1. NM Type. “Movement Typeface – a Variable Font by NM Type.” Accessed September 23, 2020. http://www.nmtype.com/movement/.
2. Canonical. “Ubuntu Font.” Accessed March 23, 2019. https://design.ubuntu.com/font/.
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