black marks

Design Indaba weekend

kushn:

This past weekend we exhibited some our range at the Design Indaba in Cape Town. The experience was really great - we met some inspiring people and learnt alot.  We’ve also got loads of fresh ideas on how to expand our range, so watch this space! A special thank you to all who helped to set up the display. <3

Posted 1 year ago — 3 notes

The rest saving the west

I recently found this competition on the GOOD site.  Too bad it’s a year too late!

The competition, conceptualized by Carolina Vallejo, flips the script on the world’s problem-solution paradigm and calls for designers from  the “developing” world to come up with sollutions to Western problems for a change. 

Vallejo isn’t suggesting designers discontinue their efforts to bring clean water, electricity, and similar necessities to the developing world. Rather, she hopes to draw attention to—and dissolve—the dualistic, Us versus Them dynamic that persists in this kind of work.

“This is one planet and the multiplicity of voices should be working together to design a developed world, one that fits us all,” she says. “The present model of the First World is failing the Third World and we [the developing world] are following those steps without having much consideration on what are the mistakes already made and where are the new ones to make. It is not only that over-optimistic naive First World designers should stop thinking that just because they are from the First World they have the solution, it’s that designers from the developing world should wake up and think that what happens in the other hemisphere is our problem as well and that everything has a direct impact on how our life is going to be.”

Vallejo isn’t just picking on well-meaning proponents of design thinking. She’s also pointing fingers at the developing world for seeming too ready to hand over their fate to others unfamiliar with their reality. It is our fault, she explains, “for critiquing ‘the system’ as if we were not part of it. And this is scalable to planetary magnitudes. It is time that we all take responsibility and agency and become present and aware, and open our hearts and minds.”

Her message to her fellow designers is a positive one. She just wants to do “a little ass-kicking first.”

“We live in a com­plex world, one full of inequities and won­der­ful things. Our fel­lows in the First World have been con­cerned for a while with us hav­ing the major share of the bad­ness, so we thought, why don’t we pay back? After all, their life isn’t problem-free either. And that’s where this com­pe­ti­tion starts”

Posted 1 year ago — 1 note

Kushn People: Meet Anwar Rayners

kushn:

Anwar Rayners is the very talented pattern maker & craftsman for Kushn who has been working in the leather industry since he was 13! We’re in awe of Anwar’s passion and dedication to his craft. He tells us that it’s the challenge of creating something new that keeps him inspired everyday. After…

(Source: kushn)

Posted 1 year ago — 13 notes