TED

Today I had a great and eye opening lecture from the Textile Environment Design research team TED. Being an up and coming textile designer it important to be aware of the climate we live in today, and realising that as a designer, I should see myself as an agent for change by considering the life cycle of the products and how to minimise the life cycle of the product and how to get the ample usage out of my creations. I really do believe that there is a huge market in recyclable  sustainable textiles that has yet to be exhausted. TED talks about the research their team do into developing textiles with a reduced impact to the environment  where they focus on ten strategies to help reduce wastage in the textile design and making processes.

It is important for me, as someone new to the textile industry, to be aware of some of these issues when designing and creating my fabrics. TED's Ten are a good guideline to ensure I am environmentally aware, and could even enhance my work by using ideas from sustainable research to take my work in a new direction. For example, the consideration of TED's number two rule of Design for Recycling/Upcycling, could completely alter the direction of my designs, or even my initial drawing. I could use recycled paper to do all my drawings on to try eliminate the vast wastage of paper in the early development stages, it could also give me an interesting and surprising result.