The David Report – April 2010
Has Design reached its sell by date?
Have we not fulfilled Design’s 20th Century’s mission to market, style, brand, and added value, to innovate and to experiment through design? Is it not time to pause and rethink, and question why, before we react the same way in the 21st Century?
We are increasingly dwelling in a created world, and for over half the world’s population this is the environment of the designed metropolis. Do we need any more, can we desire much less?
Let’s face it; design is now a major source of pollution, as process and a phenomenon, design has degenerated into a state of aesthetic proliferation that has reached accumulative and destructive levels, in terms of loss of meaning, value, and identity.
The result is a vacancy of purpose, a world full of ‘designer jetsam and flotsam’ that is swilling around or embedded into or above our planet; poorly designed products, unwanted solutions, unfriendly materials, and a mutli-choice of artefacts that are discarded as fast as they were adopted.
The David Report April 2010
david carlson
David Carlson – founder of David Report – has been working with design as a competitive advantage for more than twenty years. David helps his assigners create attractive brands ready for the challenges of the future. His design thinking is based on curiosity and culturally connected intelligence in the areas of trend insight, ideation, conceptualization and brand evolution. His assigners include Absolut, Audi, Electrolux, Level Vodka, Iittala, IKEA and Sony Ericsson to mention a few.
David Carlson is an entrepreneur with a strong moving spirit. He is the founder of the furniture brand David Design, the lifestyle shop Carlson Ahnell and the knowledge company Designboost.
David Carlson is co-author of the book Designboost 07 – sharing design knowledge and he is regularly invited as speaker and panel member at conferences in Sweden and abroad. His lectures covers trends concerning design, consumer insight, sustainability, communication, brand development and entrepreneurship. He is every now and then commissioned as moderator and writes chronicles and debate articles. He also edits and make the graphic design for a nature preservation organisation magazine (where he is chairman as well).
David Carlson is enjoying the relaxed life in the small beach community Falsterbo with perfect infrastructure in the heart of the expansive Öresund region in the southernmost part of Sweden. One of his big private interests is music. His musical story started as DJ back in the late 70th’s playing Rose Royce and Curtis Mayfield 45´s. He has also been playing guitar in different groups over the last 20 years (he was signed by EMI in the 80’s…). Over the last years David Carlson has released three compilation CD´s on Swedish, French and Japanese labels. He is also involved in advisory boards at a Montessori school, a college, a nature preservation organisation and an urban environment group. Over the years he has been interviewed numerous times in global media including magazines, TV and radio.
In the late seventies he won the Swedish track and fields junior championship in hurdle race.
