Colors

Being a photographer, you often get invited to go along to launches – products, and exhibitions alike. I personally try to make it to as many as I can. Not because I can’t say no to a freebie, but because you get to see things that you’d not usually see, meet people that you’d probably not get to meet in your normal day-to-day life, and hear stories that are truly inspiring.

Invited to the press launch of the new ‘Happiness and Other Survival Techniques’ exhibition at London’s Design Museum, the Generation magazine team and I went along to see what it was all about.

Covering the topics that COLORS magazine’s last three editions have published (Happiness, Shit and Transport), the exhibition is well laid out using photography, infographics, art installations and products that all help to tell the stories of the topics.

Happiness
Happiness, the spring issue presented as a worldwide preview at the London Design Museum, explores the different approaches to joy, from neuroscience and plastic surgery to Prozac and positive psychology. From Korea to Mexico and China to Finland, this is a handy guide to how to cheer yourself up, and why the World Health Organisation predicts that within 20 years, depression will be the most widespread illness on the planet.

Shit
Faeces, Excrement. Dung, Poo. Crap. Call it what you like, but the topic is still off limits to this day. Around two thirds of the world’s population do not have a toilet or latrine, and as a result, simple intestinal viruses kill more people each year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis put together. Poo can be a weapon of mass destruction and biological pollution, but it is also a fuel or a fertilizer: it can warm us, feed us and heal us. It is the most underrated resource in the world, and it can save our lives.

Transport
The complex grid of land, sea and air transport constantly feeds the economic development of the planet. 90% of journeys take place thanks to oil, a resource which is rapidly running out. Soon, for example, we may no longer be able to fill up the 140 million cars that currently move around the United States. COLORS tells the stories of those who, under the pressure of local circumstances, or simply to follow their own dreams, have adopted ingenious, sustainable, alternative solutions for their travels.

All-in-all, a very interesting and thought provoking exhibition that’s well worth of a visit if you get the chance. If not, click the link and check out COLORS magazine online.