When I heard that an exhibition called Re Design: Daily Products of the 21st Century was opening at the Design Exchange in Toronto, I put aside the new CD I'd been trying to open for an hour and a half, and decided to go down to King and Bay and have a look.

As explained by Re Design's curator, Kenya Hara, the idea behind the show was an elegantly simple one. Thirty-two prominent Japanese architects, designers and artists were asked "to rethink some extremely commonplace items in the world around them and, simply, redesign them." As it happened, I didn't need much convincing that this was a good idea. There seems to be room for improvement in the realm of the commonplace.

I'd killed some time earlier in the day shovelling snow with a snow shovel that seemed designed, contrary to the expectations raised by its name, for shovelling anything but snow. And while I'm on the subject of things that could be improved by thinking about them for half a second, can anyone tell me why there's never a hook on the back of the door of a public toilet? Either that, or can you hold my overcoat for a couple of minutes?

The Re Design exhibition has travelled to Glasgow, Copenhagen and Hong Kong. For its Toronto stop, five Canadian designers were asked to contribute.

The Design Exchange opening was scheduled for 6 o'clock, and since I'd skipped lunch, I felt I should have a snack before going. So I opened a new container of blueberry yogurt -- always a tricky undertaking, given the stubborn tendency of the foil seal on yogurt containers to stay sealed. Hence the word "seal," as distinct from the word, "lunch." Still, the nutritional aspect of a tub of yogurt is a small sacrifice to make, I suppose. One can't be too careful about security.

Fortunately, the paring knife that I traditionally use to open CD containers was conveniently at hand. So were the Band-Aids. It was comforting to know that first aid would be readily available should wanting some yogurt prove to be as dangerous to unguarded fingers as wanting to listen to some music. Not that I've ever figured out how to open a Band-Aid with one hand.

And yet, after I'd wiped the yogurt off the front of my shirt -- the splash being hard to avoid when you plunge a paring knife blade and part of a clenched fist into a full-to-the-brim tub of blueberry yogurt -- I remembered that I needed to walk the dog before going anywhere. Actually, I would have just changed the shirt, had I not already devoted so much time to snipping out the 100-per-cent polyester and 100-per-cent scratchy label.

For some reason the producers of 100-per-cent cotton shirts feel compelled to put that label smack in the middle of the back of my neck. That being about the only place on a shirt where I'd actually feel it. And so I put on coat and hat, and then, with the dog panting eagerly, I opened the kitchen closet to get a plastic bag. There were several thousand there. In fact, there's now nothing in the closet but little plastic grocery bags. There are great minds at work in the design department at Loblaws, I'm sure. Just not at work on what's to be done about my kitchen closet.

I don't wish to belabour my getting ready for an exhibition that was mounted by the Japan-Canada Fund (a gift to the Canada Council for the Arts from the government of Japan) and sponsored by Toyota. I'd much rather be telling you about the imaginative and often witty approach taken to the design of tissue paper boxes, tea bags, coffee drippers, toilet paper, diapers, calendars and CD holders -- to name but a few of the show's rethought commonplace items. For instance: One of the most clever items was created by Vancouver architect Peter Busby. His disposable coffee cup, made primarily from spent coffee grounds, is quite cool-looking, quite usable and 100-per-cent compostable. I'd be happy to own a few; unfortunately, I have no room in my kitchen closest.

I also liked CD holders that looked very nifty and that appeared as if they would not require any bloodshed. And I loved the fact that somewhere in Japan there was someone who asked a question that I have often pondered: Why are Kleenex boxes so ugly?

But before I go into all this, I must tell you that on my way to the Re Design exhibition -- to see what imaginative ideas Japanese and Canadian designers can bring to postcards, and immigration stamps, and elementary school textbooks, and taxi receipts -- I parked in an underground parking lot.

Underground parking lots may have their points; being in one, though, isn't one of them. And it was there, in that bleak and miserably signed world (does Exit mean car exit? Or people exit? Or is it just wishful thinking?) that I had to admit that without a doubt we live in the land of bad design. If you doubt it, see if you have any luck finding my car.

There are pinnacles of good design here and there, to be sure. We glimpse them in the rarefied distance. But down here in the commonplace -- here where the designers of inhuman underground parking lots seem to think that cars enter and exit on their own; down here where steno pads don't fit in jacket pockets, even though that's where everyone who uses them always wants to put them; down here where the environmental eternity of a zillion plastic grocery bags is somehow the best thing to put groceries in for their 15-minute journey from checkout counter to kitchen -- down here we need to be shown that imaginative, clever, innovative and responsible design is not a luxury. And Re Design is a good place to start.