‘An enthralling collection of ethical design … the really inspiring part is the simplicity of many of the ideas’ – Icon

Urgent and optimistic, a compendium and a call to action, Design Revolution is easily the most exciting design publication to come out in recent times.

This exceptionally smart, friendly and well-designed volume makes the case for design as a tool to solve some of the world’s biggest social problems in beautiful, sustainable and engaging ways, for citizens in the developing world and in more developed economies alike.

In 2008, with $1000 in savings, a laptop, and an outsized conviction that design can change the world, rising San Francisco-based product designer and activist Emily Pilloton launched Project H Design, a radical nonprofit organization that supports, inspires and delivers life-improving humanitarian product design.

We need to go beyond 'going green' and to enlist a new generation of design activists she wrote. We need big hearts, bigger business sense and the bravery to take action now.

Featuring more than 100 contemporary design products and systems – safer baby bottles, a high-tech waterless washing machine, low-cost prosthetics for landmine victims, Braille-based Lego-style building blocks for blind children, wheelchairs for rugged conditions, sugarcane charcoal, universal composting systems, DIY footballs – that are as fascinating as they are revolutionary.

At a time when the weight of climate change, global poverty and population growth are impossible to ignore, Pilloton challenges designers to be change–makers instead of ‘stuff creators.’

Emily Pilloton is the founder and executive director of Project H Design, a global industrial design nonprofit with chapters in Austin, Chicago, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, New York City and San Francisco. Trained in architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and product design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Pilloton is also a former managing editor of Inhabitat.com. She started Project H in 2008 to provide a conduit and catalyst for need-based product design that empowers individuals, communities and economies.
See Emily Pilloton talking about Project H Design, as featured on the Adobe website.

Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York–based design network that serves a global community of designers and design enthusiasts. He is editor-in-chief of www.Core77.com, www.Coroflot.com and www.Designdirectory.com, and writes and lectures widely on the impact of design on contemporary culture. Chochinov teaches in the graduate departments of Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Also of interest
Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change
The Eco-Design Handbook: A Complete Sourcebook for the Home and Office
The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture
Green Patriot Posters: Graphics for a Sustainable Community
The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live
Beyond Shelter: Architecture for Crisis