"For anyone fatigued by the term "sustainability," Jane Penty breaths vitality back into the wordexpanding its purview and animating its potential. Traversing multiple disciplines from material culture and artificial intelligence, to business frameworks, ethics, and social innovation, Jane Penty's Product Design and Sustainability may be the single most effective compendium for simultaneously defining a contemporary understanding of sustainability while providing an actionable toolkit for its practice. Required reading for design professionals, educators, and students; essential reading for anyone who needs to believe that we can find a way forward."
Allan Chochinov, Chair, SVA MFA Products of Design, NY; Partner, Core77
"A book that is timely and urgently needed - revisiting the complex and fast-evolving relationships between design, consumption, economics and technology at a pivotal moment. Product Design and Sustainability will help answer questions we all have as designers, and help further close the gap between the work that we do and our lived experience of the world."
Hugo Jamson, Creative Director, New Territory, London
"Far from the tired, doom and gloom rhetoric peddled by so many academics on this topic, Pentys hopeful treatise lights the way toward a sustainable design future. Her clear and precise theoretical writing is further elucidated by a rich repertoire of case studies, methodological tools and practical examples. This important book will surely become an essential point of reference for anyone working at the intersections of design, sustainability and systems change."
Jonathan Chapman, Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
"A wonderfully comprehensive real-world guide through the maze of sustainability for anyone involved in new product creation. It manages to be both rigorous and pragmatic in equal measure and is the perfect starting point for designers, students and academics."
Alex Hulme, director, Map Project Office, London
"Through a very accessible yet profound work, Jane Penty reminds us that product designers can play a major role in the transition to a more sustainable and meaningful tomorrow. For a whole new generation of designers ready and mobilised to engage on this course of action, this book offers a valuable tool to inform their thinking and practice."
Anne Marchand, Professor of Product Design, School of Design, Université de Montréal
"Product Design and Sustainability is a resource primed for designers to tackle wicked global problems they are increasingly required to help solve. Penty sets the scene of humanity's 'unsustainability' from a vast body of knowledge, identifying practical environmental, economic and social levers for designers to use in response. Real world examples then contextualise frameworks that are life cycle based; systemic; efficiency-led; regenerative; regulatory; socially equitable; circular; and economically transformative, to assist designers in reorienting their practice to be sustainability-driven."
Simon Lockrey, Senior Lecturer, RMIT University, Executive Director, Glowpear, Melbourne
"Jane Pentys book is a well-informed and engaging overview of the dramatic material challenges of our contemporary world we live in, as well as a useful and practical guide as to how design tools, methods and practice can be used to drive change."
Clare Brass, designer, circular economy expert and director, Department 22, London
"In a world where doomsday scenarios paint alarming pictures while designers work on the next new trend, Jane Pentys voice is calm and points to a better world through design. She asks the difficult question - what problems are we solving and how? Product Design and Sustainability calls upon us to be conscious and responsible designers and shows us how. The mix of carefully put together information, insightful analysis, detailed examples and design strategy is valuable for both the student and practitioner of design. It is comprehensive and covers several design disciplines and their intersections."
Naga Nandini, Industrial Arts and Design Practices, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore
