T H I N K I N G O U T L O U D
The good thing about my passion: working on my designs like the Recycled Magic Wallets - is, that I can both do my work, listening to podcasts or - my favorite - watching TED talks at the same time. I love crafting, learning and dreaming of how the world could be better simultaneously - it gives me a flow: Time passes and I don’t even realise it.
D R E A M I N G
I start dreaming. Dreaming of how one day all my skills I am practicing, and my knowledge I am collecting now, will all come together, will make sense and will help many other people.
M Y V I S I O N
I do have a dream. I have a vision. It involves design of course, but that’s a vague term. Everything can be - and in our world is - desigend. Mostly not as good - I mean ethical and ecological - as it should be, I think.
My vision involves making desirable products while saving on raw materials. Dematerializing the world by adding true - I mean honest/authentic - meaning to objects, producing real - I mean tangible/useful - value, which of course has its prize. Social entrepreneurism, travelling the world, education. Showing and explaining poor people the industrialized societies - including the bad sides of it. Empowerment, listening, observing, leading, connecting via new media, exchanges of experiences… all that circulates in my head.
Making money due to labour and materia - rather than due to a story that was made up. (I believe remarkable things inherently have a good i.e. authentic story behind - no need to invent a story to blow up the product or service, like Moleskine did I read in brand eins magazine’s issue about marketing.) If brand stories - than the true story told in a poetic way. The ones listening with their hearts - like le petit prince does - will understand. But no lies. Never lies. That’s my motto.
M Y D R E A M
I have a dream that poor people will have a chance to produce adorable, trustworthy stuff for demanding wealthy people. I have a dream that the rich would be willing to pay a fair price for it. I have a dream that people stop taking and taking and taking from the earth - never giving anything back. I have a dream that there will be more equality on earth. More diversity. I’m a dreamer.
M Y A C T I O N S
Now you know my dream - and probably it is one of the biggest dreams one can have. It’s good to dream big dreams. But dreaming is not enough to me. I keep trying to take baby steps in the right direction. Towards my dream. I watch TED, I make my wallets, I’m trying to find a meaningful job in London within a great team, meeting nice, influential and aspirational people to collaborate with. I keep trying to articulate my vision putting bits and pieces of me out to the public via all my online social media channels. One day, all these acts will sum up and draw a clear picture, I hope. I keep working and the direction I’m heading is forward and upwards knowing that drawbacks are important parts of this way. I do so because we cannot not change the world.
O N E D A Y
One day, I would like to stand in front of a TED audience and share my experiences I will have made by then with the world. To inspire people just the same way as today’s speakers do inspire me now. In favour of our possible future. By telling the world my story - a stroy of a tinkerer and inventor, a social designer and entrepreneur, a nomadic crafts woman as agile and free (thinking) as a lunar moth.
M E
A creative who’s design principles are different and a bit crazy: who’s ideal workshop fits into a backback, who wants to go out and see the world - much more - to interact with disadvantaged people. To make friends with good people. To understand each other. To work together. For more equality. For more happiness. For more meaning. For more moments of flow. Optimistcly and productively.
I T ‘ S B E E N D O N E B E F O R E
Some change lifes with music. Others do it with photography. Others again with new media. With banking. With a good piece of art. With science/knowledge. With money, power and belief. I am trying to do it with what I do best: making things out of no/things. Things from waste. From useless to valuable. So far by myself. Just because I haven’t found like-minded and equally crazy people yet. Or maybe my communication wasn’t too good i.e clear and convincing. Or having almost no money makes me feel weak, inferior and less social - I know it’s silly and shouldn’t be affecting me so much.
A N A N A L O G Y
I sometimes like to see myself as a modern American Indian Woman. She used to make use of all things she could find that the environment offered her. For example she made use of all parts of a bison. She didn’t need electricity to produce wonderful and/or useful things. Just her hands. Likewise am I trying to design and create my little things - just in a very, very different environment. The “old Indian way” of doing things surely restricts me. It gives me negative feedback as modern people at times don’t like my old-fashioned way of manually fixing things together. Sometimes, I tend to give in and try out suggested ways using power tools - other times, I am proud of my principles and try to stick to it.
H I G H - V E R S U S L O W - T E C H
People wonder. Why not using our modern technology? Electricity? Why denying our progress? I am not. In fact, I love my iPhone and my MacBook. My life without these tools would rather be miserable, I think. However, I don’t need them - to be precise - I choose not to use them for producing most of my physical designs. Instead, I choose to use these modern tools to connect to people, to learn, to entertain myself, to communicate - not to make my characteristic crafts/products.
I often believe it would be easier to mix high-tech and low-tech to make new things. However, in a complex world, the easiest way is not always the best i. e. most ethical and ecological way to go. It’s a bigger challenge to only stick to low-tech principles. So far, I have always taken the more challenging way. I stay with low-tech for my little things. I can be very stubborn.
W O R K I N G O N B I G T H I N G S
Am I happy? Yes. But not enough. I would love to team up with like-minded people. Because I sometimes feel lonely and I believe together we can make bigger changes. It’s good to start with the self. But Recycled Magic Wallet and other little prducts for Mayari, that’s how far I can go as a single person. I wish to do more. To enter the high-tech world maybe, still producing as ethically and ecologically as possible. Working with other specialists, exchanging ideas, creating big, yet good things. Impossible to do that all alone. Or maybe it is? But not to me. I love teamwork!
A N Y I D E A S ?
Do you know a place I - a designer and inventor who is deeply thinking about our social system and environmental impacts - would fit in? If yes - please let me know! Thanks so much!
