:: Specific Design Brief

LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

LU 4: CD CASES

PRODUCT DESIGN UK

GENERIC DESIGN CONTEXT
It has been recommended for many years that reducing, reusing and recycling provide many opportunities for environmental improvements in our own and other countries and in product manufacture. Design and make a product that uses at least one of these three criteria.

SPECIFIC DESIGN BRIEF
CD cases have been essentially unchanged for many years. They must protect the CD in transit, be effective for retailers, and provide attractive storage for the CDs � if required � for the customer. They include information about the artists, the recordings and also booklets containing the lyrics. However, from a manufacturing perspective they are quite complex. Design a more sustainable CD case.

CLIENT DETAILS
CD cases must work well from the perspectives of the manufacturer, retailer and customer and it will be important to understand all of these. Your design must be just as convincing in relation to cost and reliability, point of sale and display in the home, as it is in relation to its environmental impact. CDs (and recorded music) have important cultural as well as functional roles. Your design must suit everyone involved in the life-cycle of the CD case, and the environment.

Your first point of contact will be Loughborough University. Initially contact Eddie Norman (email [email protected] or by phone 01509-222659).

SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
� Reducing the quantity of materials entering landfill sites can significantly reduce the environmental impact of people in the UK.
� The manufacture of an appropriately designed product would provide worthwhile employment.
� Local manufacture of the product would provide employment in the UK and reduce transportation costs � both economic and environmental � associated with the product.
� Using recycled materials, reduces the extraction of raw materials and hence supports biodiversity.

FURTHER INFORMATION
ISSUES

If you decide to work on this design brief, don't forget to consider the issues of sustainability in the different phases of your designing and making.
Click here to access Sustain-a-balls

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