Three short essays written for my Design Culture module — on anti-consumerism, sustainable futures, and the objects worth keeping.
These three essays were written for my Design Culture module. Read on their own they cover very different ground — Marxism, Solarpunk, a mechanical pencil — but taken together they trace a single thread: a belief in design that resists consumerism and lasts.
What if Karl Marx Designed a Chair?
Karl Marx, best known for critiquing capitalism through the Communist Manifesto, opposed the way capitalism prioritises production above all else. Adam Smith’s idea of task specialisation raised efficiency dramatically — ten workers could produce a thousand clocks a day rather than ten complete clocks if each worked alone.
Marx argued that this efficiency came at a human cost. In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 he wrote that “the worker is related to the product of his labour as to an alien object.” Factory work stripped craftspeople of creativity and removed the soul from their labour; workers never saw the final form of what they made, and took no satisfaction from it.
A Marxist designer would build chairs through small-batch or individual production, with the same craftspeople involved throughout. Wood would be the ideal material — malleable enough for personal expression — rather than metal, which needs machinery that distances the maker from the object. The design would be simple, functional and likely modular for repair, rejecting the conspicuous decoration that caters to a particular class, and pushing back against planned obsolescence.
Design shapes human behaviour and cultural understanding, which is what makes these choices matter.
Designing a Sustainable Future
Design gives cultural context across human history while shaping how societies behave. Hostile architecture is a pessimistic example of that power; “Solarpunk” is the optimistic alternative.
The Solarpunk manifesto frames the movement as asking “what does a sustainable civilisation look like, and how can we get there?” It embraces technological progress while opposing capitalism, consumerism, artificial scarcity, and short-term thinking about long-term problems. It prioritises renewable energy and green architecture, and asks designers to weigh a product’s broader impact rather than its immediate utility alone.
Aesthetically, Solarpunk pictures humanity living in harmony with nature, supported — not dominated — by technology: wind turbines above people tending fields, in greens, browns, sky blue and chrome.
The honest difficulty is personal reluctance to give up conveniences; real change seems to need mutual commitment. Design is the practical bridge, making a sustainable future feel realistic by shifting how the public imagines it.
My Relationship to the Rotring 600
The Rotring 600 mechanical pencil — almost entirely metal, with a painted steel body and brass components — is a study in longevity-focused design. Its hexagonal form transitions to a cylinder with a fine criss-cross grip, and the weighted construction makes it sit well while sketching.
The grip is comfortable and secure, though its fine metallic texture traps dirt and needs cleaning. Its one real flaw is the small eraser cap, which lodges inside the barrel with nothing to retain it, becomes hard to grip, and is eventually abandoned as a mere cap.
Its greatest value, though, is emotional. Throughout the whole journey of learning to draw, this pencil was constant company. The drawings that got me into university were made with it; it came with me across Western Europe, documenting everything I saw. Longevity-focused products build deeper connections than disposable ones — memories attach themselves to durable objects, which start to work like a journal.
Reflection
The three essays — the Marxist chair, the Solarpunk future, and the Rotring 600 — share an explicit anti-consumerism. Reading them side by side, a personal design manifesto starts to emerge.
I make no claim to expertise in economic theory, but I do hold that people deserve equal treatment, and work driven by passion rather than necessity. Anti-consumerism follows from that: the semi-disposable products flooding the market reach their prices through low wages and poor conditions — the by-product of demanding cheapness without regard for quality or durability.
Longevity is the constructive half of the same idea. Well-made objects last longer and serve better; the higher up-front cost pays back by never needing to be replaced, and the longer you keep something, the more the design has a chance to earn its keep.
