AIGA: Designing Water's Future

It's global. It's interesting. It's needed. It might even make students think. It's AIGA's Aspen Design Challenge, "a call to students worldwide, to use their creative talent and strategic design skills to address a crucial global problem." The goal of the project is to raise awareness for the global water crisis in visually innovative ways that inspire people to act. This sounds like such a great design project for students, particularly my California kids, many of whom hail from SoCal: a desert turned unnaturally green through fastidious and ecologically irresponsible use of the sprinkler. I'm so inspired by this project that I'm actually contemplating ways to fit it in during my fall maternity leave. Plus, I want to go to the World Summit on Climate Change in 2009. It's Copenhagen or bust. The larger question is: are my students actually in possession of "creative talent and strategic design skills"? Hmm. I'll try to be an optimist here.

Designers Get Green in San Diego

Last weekend, we packed up the Prius and traveled down to San Diego for the 13th annual Y-Conference. This year's theme was Seeds of Change and tackled issues of sustainability in both design and life. I adore this conference, because the quality of speakers is consistently top notch (of course, there are always a few duds, but this is impossible to avoid), the San Diego chapter of the AIGA is eclectic (designers seem authentic and wear colors other than black) and totally non-snooty, the University of San Diego is a lovely location, the weather is glorious in late March, and the conference is very affordable by AIGA standards. I was so excited when I learned about the theme of Y-13 and couldn't wait to bask in the eco-love.

And I was not disappointed. Robert Noble, of Envision Solar is now my hero. For years I've been ranting about parking lots in SoCal and all that sun that could be generating energy. Well, Mr. Noble is covering those God-forsaken, hotter than hell, gigante mall parking lots with Solar Groves™. What a poetic name for and beautiful incarnation of green design at its best. This is just one of Mr. Noble's many innovative and progressive projects; the man is a true visionary and all around cool guy.

Another super duper inspiring speaker was Brian Dougherty of Celery Design Collective, based in Berkeley. Not only does Celery Design create beautiful work, but it is also eco-innovative, big time. They even created a free online ecological guide to paper to help designers make sense of PCW, ECF, PCF, TCF, FSC, etc. Holy cow, paper specing in more complicated than ever. Thank you Brian for proving that a fabulous printed piece doesn't have to include a matte varnish, a gloss varnish, a double hit of florescent ink, foil stamping, tip-ins, and full bleed images. In my view, any designer who does not at least consider issues of sustainability in their work is, well, a moron.

I have only one negative comment about the conference and that is: Organic ToGo sucks. And it sucks on a number of levels. First, the food lacks, well, flavour. Second, every single item is packaged in plastic. Third, and most horrific: BAGGED SLICED APPLES! Now, I am not a proponent of all caps or the exclamation point, for that matter, but the very core of my being is offended by bagged sliced apples. Apples: perfected packed by Mother Nature. Slicing apples drastically reduces their shelf life and necessitates the use of some form of preservative (usually asorbic acid). So instead of biting into a delicious, crisp organic apple, I had to suffer through soggy slices with a faint hint of what can only be described as chewable vitamin C taste: chalky and faux citrusy. The organizers of the conference actually apologized for the food and mentioned that they had hoped to avoid totally plastic-encased lunches. Oh well, these things happen.

All in all, Y-13 was educational, eye-opening, at times mind blowing, and very inspiring. Nice work AIGA San Diego: you guys and gals deserve a big meyer lemon martini for your efforts.

Your Toothbrush's Carbon Footprint

On Saturday, I attended AIGA's Compostmodern conference in San Francisco. The conference was organized by the S.F. chapter of the AIGA and AIGA's Center for Sustainable Design. It's exciting that designers are talking about sustainability even though the concept of sustainability seems at odds, or downright antithetical, to a lot of graphic design. Afterall, don't designer's love itty bitty type surrounded by white space, glorious white space? Certainly, the AIGA has sent out its fair share of multiple page publications with florescent inks and vellum overlays. But, change is good and change is progressive and I do think that AIGA and designers are trying to change.

One of the speakers at Compostmodern was Valerie Casey, the founder of The Designer's Accord: "a call to arms for the creative community to reduce the environmental impact caused by design, and to work collaboratively to inspire sustainable change." Her talk was impassioned and quite inspiring, although, there were multiple mentions of purchasing carbon offsets, which seem like a big sustainability boondoggle to me. Can matter, once created, be eliminated, oh, I mean, offset? Wouldn't it be better to reduce business travel, given that we are living in an age of easy and inexpensive global communication.

Another thing that came up in Ms. Casey's talk was the design of the toothbrush and how horrified one of her coworkers at IDEO was to see his design wash up on the beach five years later almost perfectly preserved in its original sparkly plastic glory. Which got me to thinking: why can't industrial designers come up with a reasonably designed toothbrush? Toothbrushes are now so bloated and over-designed that older toothbrush holders (the kind with little holes in a closed container) cannot accommodate them. The design of such toothbrushes has long annoyed me given the ephemerality of this product. Isn't it just the bristles that need replacing every there months, anyways? Imagine the carbon footprint of our country's collective toothbrushes. Here's my call to arms to all you product designers out there: for the love of God, please re-design the toothbrush!! I, for one, would pay big bucks for a sustainable alternative to this: