Designing Change: Wall E

The Disney Pixar movie Wall E is a movie that tries to change society by analyzing the road we are traveling into the future, but my focus is not to look at the warnings that Wall E seeks to provide, but rather to look at the construction of the case for the DVD. The entire case for the Wall E DVD is made of cardboard. There is not one bit of plastic. The case says on it's back that it is "Earth (and Space) Friendly Eco-Packaging." When searching for information on this packaging I came across a lot of negative reactions. People want their plastic cases, but Wall E stuck with it's principle and created the environmentally friendly packaging. 

From Jon Taplin's Bloghttp://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/06/

I think to be a designer of any packaging at all is to take responsibility for the trash you will serve to create. When a new innovation is made people always resist, but I hope to see many more of these cases in the future (at least until everything is digital online, with no packaging whatsoever). Wall E shoves a mirror in the face of our consumer driven society, and asks us to take a look at what we are doing with all of the trash we create. I think that by sticking to it's message and creating a recyclable, biodegradable package that Pixar has once again used it's medium to make people think and learn, and it was done in a non-hypocritical manner. Changing society takes small steps. Designing change is a process of balancing what people want with what the world needs. This package heads in a good direction.

Stone Soup

Image from NY mag
http://nymag.com/

The principle and idea behind Stone Soup is: 'the more people the better.' The more ideas that are thrown around by people with different perspectives and backgrounds, the more unique and multifaceted the final product will be. In the design world working together has to be important. When you design, you are designing for an audience, not yourself.

Pixar animation studios employs the 'Stone Soup' technique in their creative processes. In every little aspect on feature films the folks at Pixar collaborate. In the book To Infinity and Beyond: A Story of Pixar Animation Studios, I read about the way Pixar handles the processes of writing a story, designing characters, designing mood colors, backgrounds, and even designing the animated action and emotion of the characters in the film. These different aspects are gone over everyday with many artists, directors, story board artists, animators, and even the technical programmers. They are critiqued, analyzed, challenged and improved. Pixar does not miss a chance for greatness by confining any person to any role. They utilize the creativity in every single member of their unique team in every aspect of their film making.

The people of Pixar also know that they do need to please themselves as well. They need to remember who they are and the job they are doing, and not get too caught up in pleasing everyone else. By having a team they have a good balance of critique and unification. They have a common goal with different ideas about how to get there. The best ideas make it to the end, but most of those are combinations of many different people as they feed off of one another to create something brilliant. Stone Soup is the heartiest soup there is.