How Design Fails Sustainability

No matter what the world does, it seems like long-lasting climate action doesn’t catch on. No policy or agreement has lived up to its promised commitment, with even the largely successful Montreal Protocol showing recent non-compliance. As the climate crisis continues to worsen, let’s examine the role of design, and how even though we’ve discussed this before, it’s important, if not vital, to keep the conversation going.

COVER IMAGE: Work by Paula Scher of Pentagram for Do the Green Thing Issue 10.

Brian Dougherty’s Green Graphic Design introduced the foundations of sustainable design, and to this day, it serves as both a guide and resource for print designers. After completing the book, I was surprised by how Green Graphic Design was able to reduce the ambiguity I had with designing for the environment. As I dove into this work, nearly a decade after its publication, I began to question why Green Graphic Design’s ideas haven’t become the norm (especially to me, a fresh college graduate entering this industry).  

Dougherty speculated that “Within the next ten years, almost every graphic designer will be a green designer to some degree” (21). Yes, designers today practice green design in the messages they deliver and the products they design, but not to the extent of impactful climate action and the systems that drove us here.

From my viewpoint, environmentalism and design are functioning in separate camps, and almost act in opposition to each other. One aims to preserve resources, reduce emissions, and conserve land, while the latter works in continuous creation, using and producing more and more goods.

As a sustainable design studio, this is an interesting conundrum. It is central to our ethos to be designers who impart change from brands to people, and to collaborate with mission-based clients who we believe can positively impact the world. While developing more packaging isn’t necessarily going to stop climate devastation, providing a better choice for the consumer empowers them to decide what causes they support. Whether that means fair trade, carbon neutral, or non-GMO goods, we believe making these choices is the first step in creating system change.
 

Aesthetics

“Design that is about appearance, or margins, or offerings and market segments, and not about real people—their needs, abilities, desires, emotions, and so on—that’s the design that is the problem.” (Design Is the Problem, Nathan Shedroff)

Graphic design, like many humanities, is greatly informed by aesthetics. Unfortunately, design education solely focused on visual fundamentals has neglected to teach design for reducing and preserving resources. While designers and consumers alike criticize the cycles of planned obsolescence, industries have not invested in creating a viable, scalable antidote. As Norman Potter questioned, “Does design work justify its claims to social usefulness[,] or is it a privileged form of self expression?”, it’s hard to defend design as a tool for good when it is expressive at the expense of resources.

In considering Dieter Ram’s “10 principles of good design,” mainstream graphic design has neglected the 9th principle: Good design is environmentally friendly. Dougherty has already laid out how to do this in Green Graphic Design, it will just have to take a change in culture to make sustainable design the norm. We have to be willing to redefine what good design looks like, and hold technologies and products to a higher standard of sustainability. As Dougherty explains, “If we redefine ‘good design’ to encompass green thinking, then it is automatically part of our job. We don’t need permission to do good any more than we need permission to obsess about kerning” (15). By asking brands what good is their product doing for the environment, how they’re supporting marginalized communities, and using their privilege to dismantle oppressive power structures, we become better, more empathetic designers.

Privilege

Sustainability is popularized to consumers as purchasing high quality goods at high prices, carrying the assumption that lower cost = lower quality. For example, a brand like Reformation markets its high quality clothing with its commitment to sustainability. Every product on their website includes a RefScale, which measures the amount of carbon dioxide, water, and textile waste that product has saved compared to the industry standard. They’re transparent about their labor practices and use their platform to support causes like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. This is an excellent model and practice to follow, and is a great company to support as a consumer, if you can afford it. With a single dress or skirt will costing around $100-$200 (not including tax or shipping), this is an unattainable and privileged form of environmentalism. While I agree that clothing should be more expensive to guarantee fair wages to the people involved in its production, this standard is exclusive because it markets an exclusive form of environmentalism. Furthermore, this kind of business model maintains the assumption that designers only create products for the elite class.

With 60.4% of graphic designers identifying as White/Caucasian, and 72.9% having a college degree or higher, the barrier to enter the design industry remains inaccessible. If we neglect to diversify our industry, dominated by social and economic privilege, we are complicit in perpetuating the exclusion that has escalated the effects and impact of climate change.

Communication tactics

For a long time, environmentalist messaging has failed to inspire large scale advocacy and action among civilians. Popular “eco-friendly” tips, like recycling or flying less frequently, only places the blame and burden on individual responsibility. At the same time, nationwide policy solutions and carbon emissions reduction have also been ineffective. So what can we do? If individuals and corporations aren’t succeeding, maybe the solution is in communities.

Dougherty later explains in Green Graphic Design that “[designers] can’t know what others will do, but we can do our part by creating designs that won’t necessarily end up in a landfill.” It’s not the most clear or actionable place to start, but it’s one step toward realizing a more sustainable future. Individual action may not yield the fastest results, but it is effective in changing your mindset, and developing the empathy needed to understand where environmentalism intersects with social awareness. 

When we start to care about our communities and change our habits, it will take massive courage and determination to keep going. This is the kind of ideal that Green Graphic Design fails to address: intersectional environmentalism. Until we focus on the societal, economic, and class implications that design affects in the world, we cannot build a model of green design that will work for everyone.

This post is the first in a two-part series about Green Graphic Design. Stay tuned for part two coming soon.