Product Design Gallery: Going Grey

Referencing society's current tendency to medicate against and operate on perceived flaws, students from Central Saint Martins create 'grey prevention' solutions.

Feeling tired? Take a pill to boost your energy. Can’t sleep? Take a pill to knock you out. Feeling anxious? Take a pill to calm you down. No matter the problem, there’s a pill for it. Pharmaceutical companies are working on drugs right now to treat a disease you didn’t even know you had.

When it comes to health and beauty, we have come to expect the quick fix. There are pills for weight loss, radiant skin, shimmering hair, and of course, grey hair prevention.  In the UK, a 2013 National Statistics report showed that 1,064.6 million prescription items were dispensed overall, a 3.3 per cent increase (34.5 million items) on the previous year and a 55.2 per cent increase (378.4 million items) on 2004. In the US, physician and researcher J. Douglas Bremner MD, author of Before You Take That Pill: Why the Drug Industry May be Bad for Your Health, stated that,' the US spends two times more on drugs, and takes twice as many drugs, as other countries, and has worse health.' He implies that not only are we paying too much for too many drugs, but that on a whole they are not working.

Many of the beauty pills are based on wholly unscientific claims, without any supporting evidence that they work. We don’t know what chemicals they contain, or what the long-term effects may be, if any.