Following a post-war period, Victor Papanek emerged with a subversive design vengeance, embracing an international understanding of societies and cultures as the only means to saving the global environment. He claimed our genuine needs were being neglected due to the higher profitability of fad and fashion. (1) The essential meaning of products was being unsatisfied by a "hard-core, hard sell advertising industry" promoting obsolescence with substandard workmanship.1 While consumer awareness and protection were already advocated in the 1950's and 1960's by Vance Packard, Ralph Nadar, and Consumer Reports, as well as others,2 Victor came forth in the early 1970's to rally the students, who he felt could change the superfluous mentality of design.

He encouraged small, interdisciplinary teams to create ecologically balanced designs, analogous with operational systems in nature. Becoming a role model for his ideology, he lived in multiple Third World societies encouraging a do-it-yourself, grass-roots philosophy. This would bring about self-reliance and a closer relationship between design and people to better impact the environment. To clarify his vision for ideal design, Victor developed a Product Life Cycle Assessment diagram representing the "six potentially ecologically dangerous phases" of a product. (2)