With climate change a tangible reality, environmental issues are climbing to the top of everyone's agenda. Design is no exception. After a decade-long party accompanying their rising popular profile and commercial success, designers have begun to sober up.

At Design Tide and 100% Design, the big shows at last week's Tokyo Designer's Week, this shift was evident.

Eminent British designer Jasper Morrison, writing in U.K. design magazine Icon in August, hit a nerve with the following words: "Design, which used to be almost unknown as a profession, has become a major source of pollution. Encouraged by glossy lifestyle magazines and marketing departments, it's become a competition to make things as noticeable as possible by means of color, shape and surprise. Its historic and idealistic purpose, to serve industry and the happy consuming masses at the same time, of conceiving things easier to make and better to live with, seems to have been side-tracked." The same journal has even publicly called for a "design recession" to trim the fat and to refocus design talent and ideals toward responding to genuine needs.