ABOUT
Then, as if waiting for the 21st century, new goals for society started to reveal themselves. The industrial society scenario, where expansion of human materialism would advance society as a whole, was no longer valid, and this became evident to everyone. Our future would no longer be assured, unless we built a world non-reliant upon the taking of the earth's resources and we stopped creating a society of "haves” and "have-nots."
In essence, a sustainable society cannot be achieved unless we change how we inhabit and breathe on this planet. The micro issues relate to the individual lifestyles of every single person living among a global population of 6 billion, and the macro issues require wisdom to resolve the connections for sharing throughout the world. That wisdom is design.
The leaders of this century remain each one of us who leads an ordinary life. Yet in the course of our daily lives, we must be resolving a host of problems. In that context, an apparatus to embed design competency and to transform design into an engine that carries society forward seems indispensable. We have therefore decided to re-establish the central promotion apparatus in Japan, the Good Design Awards, as an open platform.
First, designers make lifestyle recommendations towards the attainment of a sustainable society, which consumers can support. If support is large enough, the recommendation has a high likelihood of being implemented. The platform in its early life will fulfill the foregoing function. As design-consciousness among consumers improves, however, the rate of successful implementations among recommendations should rise dramatically.
Design represents an intelligent problem-solving body of knowledge, and also intrinsic circuitry for sharing among people. All designs represent a hypothesis, and propound the following question: "Here is my solution. Will it hold water?" As new proposals to the hypothesis come forward, the process can cultivate a powerful engine that carries society forward with the following call: "Perhaps we can improve on the solution like this." Design alters the individual, which means that design can be a medium to alter society as a whole. We are at the dawn of an age where understanding and resonance to the design of a single individual can alter the course of our times.