An inspirational exhibit of design for global good

It’s easy to assume design is all about beauty and packaging and pleasing the eye. Design, after all, is often the secret sauce in the various shiny, seductive objects built to tempt our eyes and wallets.

But “Design for Social Impact” at the Museum of Design Atlanta proposes another conception of design: a tool to heal social ills.

Those problems can range from poverty, infant mortality and homelessness to something as seemingly insignificant as a quick and easy way to crack peanut shells. (Peanuts, it turns out, are a cash crop in many poor countries whose profit margin quickly diminishes during the hours it takes to shell them.)

Taking up the cause of building a better nut cracker, inventor Jock Brandis created the Universal Nut Sheller, which allows communities that rely on peanuts as a source of protein and profit to shell them with ease. It’s just one of the innovations that define this surprisingly uplifting exhibition dedicated to improving the lives of people for whom design is literally the difference between life and death.

Some of the projects are fully realized and some have yet to be implemented. Atlanta’s own Mad Housers have provided dignity and a modest roof over the heads of local homeless men and women with their plywood shelters, one of which is on display in the gallery. But other projects, like designer Candy Chang’s less inspiring effort to use stickers in public places as a way for ordinary people to air grievances, are more an expression of yearned-for change than great design in action.

A number of these inventions come out of college campuses like Georgia Tech, Harvard, Stanford and MIT, where a new generation of students is not only aware of, but ready to act on, global needs.

On that level alone the show is inspiring: Anyone worried that colleges have become overpriced career mills would be heartened by case studies like the SafiChoo toilet invented by a team of female Georgia Tech students to address the lack of sanitary bathrooms in developing countries.

SafiChoo also illustrates an important theme of this exhibition: The difference between success or failure in design to address human need is often road-testing. By taking their inventions to refugee camps or impoverished neighborhoods, designers like the SafiChoo team ensure their work is not handed down from on high, but also considers the invention’s real-world usability.

The projects in “Design for Social Impact” are radically different. There are First World innovations, like designer Deborah Adler’s improvements in prescription pill bottles, adopted as the Clear Rx line by Target. Adler’s clearer labels and design help prevent accidents in taking the wrong medicine or improper dosage.

But more dramatic — and likely to make you count your good fortune — are design projects for the Third World that address issues like the lack of shelter, clean water and decent sanitation or the daily grind of backbreaking labor.

Lest we pat ourselves on the back for the West’s advantages over more impoverished regions, “Design for Social Impact” is a wake-up call that First World problems aren’t all cable TV outages and spoiled goat cheese. Several of the design innovations come from Southern groups, like Auburn University’s Rural Studio, who respond to poverty within our own borders. And an educational poster campaign from the Atlanta division of the American Institute of Graphic Arts tackles the shockingly prevalent scourge of human trafficking in the city.

The biggest flaw in “Design for Social Impact” is a common one at MODA: A text-heavy exposition often makes one yearn for a way to streamline such topics in the way these socially conscious designers have streamlined their inventions, cutting to the heart of the need.