Power Point

File this one away under "Great Ideas."

John Ardern, a designer from London, has taken second place in a DESIGN 21 Competition for his "Power Point," a fantastic gadget that makes the amount of power being consumed by each electrical socket visible. The idea is that, after seeing how much energy we are using/wasting, we might change our habits.

The DESIGN 21 series challenges designers of all disciplines to find solutions to social and global issues. The prompt for this particular competition, Heated issues, was: "Design an awareness campaign to educate the public on the issue of global warming."

As one of the judges of the competition noted, Ardern's design makes the invisible visible.

We agree, and admire the design so much because it forces us to consider something that would normally be so easy to ignore.