The post office recently reported its first profit in years. I'm pretty sure most of that was down to me. You see, I've just sent 1,000 newspapers to locations as far apart as New Zealand and New York. I'm a partner in a new organisation called the Really Interesting Group. At the end of last year we collected some of our favourite blog posts, pictures and tweets and made it into a limited-edition newspaper. People requested them online and we duly posted them. All for free.
Why did we do that? Well, we had an idea for a product of the future. A product where people could tag blog posts online and generate a properly printed newspaper. We figured the best way to see if that would work was just to do it. So we did. All 1,000 newspapers were gone in days. But more interestingly than that, all sorts of intriguing commercial opportunities have emerged. From people asking us to create one for them, to people wanting to produce one with us, as a joint venture.
We're in the midst of a period where people are questioning business models. It's in these downturned times that new innovative businesses and ideas spring up. Recessions are a good time to "prototype". Decisions get made quicker. New ideas don't get bogged down in process. People take risks. Recessions have happened before, of course, but this time we have a whole generation of people who are used to making new stuff happen fast on the web. Have an idea, go home, bash out the code and launch to the world. We are living in a world where people are used to prototyping quickly and cheaply.
This is the year of economic crisis. Last year it was the year of climate crisis. That hasn't gone away. I can't help but feel the two complement each other. One idea emerging from the creative community as a means of fighting climate change is to give more value but produce less stuff. We're beginning to call this "unproduct". Have I ever bored you with this idea? No. Really?
Originally coined by the designer Matt Jones and built upon by the strategist Russell Davies, among others, unproduct is basically maximum idea, minimum stuff. Because it is such a new concept, good unproduct examples are very hard to find. However, clothing company Howies is making something called the Hand Me Down range - a range of jackets and bags designed to be very long-lasting. Guaranteed for 10 years, they come complete with a certificate where you state who you'll pass it on to when you've finished with it. And it's high quality, expensive stuff, sort of in line with Bruce Sterling's last Viridian note.
Sterling, the US sci-fi author, who founded the Viridian Design Movement - a type of design focused on high-tech, stylish, and ecologically sound design - states in the last Viridian note that we mustn't economise. We should instead strive to own things we cherish and use every day. "The everyday object is the monarch of all objects," he says.
If you don't think this is important or realistic, consider this quote from Sir Martin Sorrell, the head of WPP, the world's largest communications services group. Last year he said: "Our view, counter to what you expect, is that conspicuous consumption is not productive and should be discouraged."
Can you see the economic crisis and the climate crisis colliding to create new business models? I can. More than anything, unproduct is a new way of thinking about things. A new model. So is making something and giving it away. So are joint ventures. We've got people building stuff quickly, trying out new ideas, often for free. We have clients and agencies taking risks and more importantly sharing those risks.
We're creating maximum ideas and minimum stuff. I think 2009 is going to be exciting.
Ben Terrett is a London-based graphic designer, a partner in the Really Interesting Group and a mentor in graphic design at De Paul University, Chicago