Design for the Other 90% (Book Review)

“Design for the Other 90%”; edited by Cynthia Smith;, The Smithsonian Institution – Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum ;c2007; #0910503974 ; $18.00; 144 pages.

Founded more than a century ago, Cooper Hewitt is the only museum in the U.S. devoted to historic and contemporary design; it has been part of the Smithsonian for nearly 50 years. A recent exhibit, “Design for the Other 90%”, resulted in this book - which is, technically, an exhibition catalog. Due to the success of the project, the book is now widely available from mainstream sources, as well as the Museum Shop. The book is best summarized by the curators, in the opening press release for the project: “Of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion, 5.8 billion people, or 90%, have little or no access to most of the products and services many of us take for granted; in fact, nearly half do not have regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% explores a growing movement among designers to design low-cost solutions for this “other 90%.” Through partnerships both local and global, individuals and organizations are finding unique ways to address the basic challenges of survival and progress faced by the world’s poor and marginalized.”

In many cases, there is no substitute for a particular book (or exhibition); in order to evaluate it you need to see it (or one like it), and if it is unique, you need to see that very title. The beauty of modern exhibitions, and some of the resulting catalogs, is that via the web a great deal of the content can be relayed outside a trip to the traveling show (the traveling exhibition calendar can be found here), which for many people would require a trip of great distances. This volume is accompanied by an impressive website of the same name, one so revealing and detailed it may make actually hurt book sales. The website covers the essentials of the volume, as well as the exhibition itself (see About the Exhibition - and there are related online videos, too. Via the website you can investigate the broad design categories represented in the project: energy, water, shelter, health, transport and education (and each category has a tool-bar menu with product entries, etc.). There is also a directory of those organizations tied to the exhibition products and design , and a corresponding blog with research chronicles and field updates from protect development, testing, and use.

While one could locate any of these products via the web, often it is not easy to locate directories or indexes to such work; these sorts of products often get tiny blurb-notice on the last page of a mainstream magazine (topics asuch as camping, technology, rural living, etc.). This work is incredibly useful for not just pulling ideas together, but revealing the growing interest in the ideas and marketing of them. In some respects it is in the same vein as Emily Pilloton’s new volume, “Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People”, published by Metropolis Books – the same outfit that handled, Design Like You Give a Damn .