Keynote Speech

Place, Space, and Opportunity: Communication Designers Confront Sustainable Challenges

Agitating for change, challenging corporate culture, and leading the way towards a sustainable future are not values that are immediately associated with communication designers. However, in places where political leaders have ignored the reality of global warming and large companies have resisted greening their businesses, communication designers are creating new services and innovative sustainable design solutions. Argentinean designer Sebastian Guerrinni believes that he has an obligation to initiate environmental change and social reform even though he lives in a country where recycled papers and eco-friendly printing can be seven times more expensive than traditional production. Guerrinni repurposes waste from his local refuse station to create whimsical compositions that hint at the familiar while challenging viewers to use common materials in unexpected ways. Nau, a company specializing in chic high performance clothing, was founded in 2006 by a group of designers (including several communication designers) who wanted to see environmental and social values incorporated in a retail environment. Focusing on online as opposed to physical space, the company has created a sustainable brand though the use of reclaimed and recycled materials, a commitment to consumer education, and partnerships with non-profit organizations. The US carpet industry is localized primarily in the Southeastern part of the country and neither the area nor the industry is considered to be particularly progressive. The founders of Tricycle Inc. saw an opportunity to use their design skills to dematerialize carpet sampling and partner with interior designers to move the industry towards more responsible practices. Each of these case studies is an example how design thinking rather than a preoccupation with materials has allowed communication designers to solve problems that are particular to their place and context while working to evolve the contemporary environment.

The Ecomaterials used posters and a book, designed by Sebastian Guerrini, to educate professionals from the construction industry about new materials, emerging technology, and different ways of using resources that could be less harmful to the environment.

While working on the Ecomaterials project, Guerrini consciously avoided using a visual aesthetic that would be familiar to architects. Instead he concentrated on the making trash beautiful. Guerrini collected interesting- looking refuse at his local recycling station. By putting several objects together or creating entire installations, he produced more than fifty vignettes to draw a viewer’s attention to the exhibition content. In the studio, with the help of a photographer, he documented the compositions and the resulting images were used for posters, exhibit panels, and exhibit publications. Guerrini believes that the juxtaposition of his playful sculptures with the technical information about construction helped support the philosophical rational for minimizing impact on the environment. “We waste time and resources and complicate our own reality,” he says. “Something that is very simple can more appropriately reflect one’s own environment and life.”

By selling primarily through the company’s website, Nau is able to present more complicated information about its strict production requirements, use of recycled materials and commitment to returning 25 percent of profits to selected non-profit partners. Additionally Nau encourages customers to wear their products season after season and believes that by making high-quality timeless products they can help to combat the problems associated with disposable merchandise. Communication designers were part of the team that founded Nau and have been responsible for the online image, complete company branding, the vision for the look and feel of clothing as well as the design of the company’s physical retail environments.

Nau founders began their careers at Patagonia, a company that is considered fairly environmentally friendly by US standards. They were frustrated by the difficulty of trying to move a traditional bricks and mortar and catalogue dependent company towards sustainable thinking. Unlike Patagonia, Nau is a web based store. A limited number of “Webfronts” exist primarily to support and promote the online brand. At these physical retail environments customers are educated about the benefits of sustainable clothing production and are encouraged to make purchases at kiosks that send items from a centrally located warehouse to buyers homes. A 10 percent price reduction and free shipping gives buyers an incentive to wait a few extra days for purchases.

Tricycle Inc. Created its own market for their proprietary products and services. The Erase Waste Campaign targeted professionals in the interiors industry. Advertisements in magazines, stickers and this informational booth at the countries largest trade show encouraged interior designers to send sample books back to carpet companies and demand that the sampling process be dematerialized.

Tricycle calls itself a Sustainable Company - their output includes websites, advertising, computer simulations, branding and environmental consulting. For the company Nood, Tricycle created a viral sticker campaign where Nood encouraged interior designers to use stickers and repurpose old sample books for Noods new product spec sheets, and digital and printed samples.

The Blink website allows designers to preview product with online simulations and to customize specific samples to be viewed digitally or printed. The built-in room simulation service gives the view of a chosen product in a realistic context. The challenge was to get interior professionals and clients who were used to actual sample of carpet to switch to the online sampling and simulation system. The sample book acted as a bridge between the physical and the virtual. It retained an appearance that would be familiar to designers but used easy to place sticky paper samples and encouraged designers to order online.

Captions
Ecomaterials exhibit.
Ecomaterials - the book.
Ecomaterials posters.
Nau website at nau.com
Nau “Webfronts”
Images