The circular economy represents a paradigm shift from the traditional linear “take-make-dispose” model to a regenerative approach that keeps materials in use, eliminates waste and pollution, and regenerates natural systems. As resources become scarcer and environmental concerns more pressing, designers have a crucial role in reimagining how products are created, used, and repurposed.

Concepts from Circular Design

• Biological vs. Technical nutrients: Understanding the difference between materials that can safely return to the biosphere (biological nutrients) and those that should be kept within technical cycles (technical nutrients). This really requires thinking clearly about Nutrient metabolism: Designing products so their components can be metabolized safely by either natural systems (biodegradation) or industrial systems (recycling, remanufacturing).
• Cascading use: Utilizing materials through multiple applications before they’re broken down, maximizing their utility and value before returning to natural systems.
• Closed-loop cycles: Creating systems where materials continuously circulate without degradation or loss of quality through technical or biological pathways.
• Design for durability and longevity: Creating products that last longer and can be easily repaired reduces the need for replacements.
• Design for disassembly: Making products that can be easily taken apart at end-of-life facilitates material recovery.
• Material selection: Choosing renewable, recyclable, or biodegradable materials that can safely re-enter either technical or biological cycles.
• Waste elimination: Designing out waste and pollution from the beginning rather than dealing with them after they’re created.
• Systems thinking: Considering the entire lifecycle of products and their broader impacts on social and ecological systems.
• Upcycling: Transforming by-products or waste materials into new products of higher quality or environmental value rather than downcycling them into lower-quality applications.

Case Study: Interface

Interface, a global commercial flooring company, pioneered sustainable practices in manufacturing through its “Mission Zero” commitment. The company revolutionized carpet tile production by:

• Implementing a take-back program that recycles old carpet tiles into new products
• Developing manufacturing processes that use recycled and bio-based materials
• Reducing manufacturing waste and water usage
• Creating modular carpet tiles that allow for selective replacement of worn areas rather than entire floors

Their approach demonstrates how circular design thinking can transform an entire business model while maintaining profitability and market leadership.

• Our Mission
• From Mission Zero to Climate Take Back: How Interface is Transforming its Business to Have Zero Negative Impact | Global | UNFCCC

Case Study: Renault Group

The Renault Group has embraced circular economy principles through its “Renault Environment” subsidiary, focusing on:

• Remanufacturing automotive parts to extend their useful life
• Designing vehicles for easier disassembly and recycling at end-of-life
• Establishing a closed-loop recycling system for automotive materials
• Creating the Renault Zoe electric vehicle with a focus on recyclability and responsible material sourcing

By 2030, Renault aims to become the most circular car manufacturer in Europe…

• Circular economy: What if cars were to become our main resource?
• Environment

Some Design Strategies for Circular Economy

1. Product as a Service (PaaS)

Shifting from ownership to service-based models where manufacturers retain ownership of products and customers pay for performance or access. This incentivizes durability, maintenance, and efficient resource use.

2. Biomimicry

Learning from and emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies to create more sustainable designs and processes that work in harmony with natural systems.

3. Regenerative Design

Going beyond sustainability to create designs that actively restore and regenerate environmental and social systems, leaving them better than before.

Challenges and Opportunities

While the transition to circular design presents challenges — including technical complexity, supply chain coordination, and economic barriers — it also offers significant opportunities:

• Innovation that leads to new products, services, and business models
• Cost savings from material efficiency and waste reduction
• Enhanced brand reputation and customer loyalty
• Reduced vulnerability to resource scarcity and price volatility
• New job creation in repair, remanufacturing, and recycling sectors

Conclusion

The intersection of design and sustainability through circular economy principles offers a promising path forward for addressing our most pressing environmental challenges. By reimagining how products are designed, manufactured, used, and reintegrated into systems, designers can play a pivotal role in creating a more sustainable and regenerative future. The examples of Interface and Renault Group demonstrate that circular approaches are not only environmentally beneficial but can also drive business success and innovation.

For readers interested in delving deeper into circular economy concepts, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation provides extensive resources, case studies, and educational materials on circular design and economy principles. Their website offers numerous reports and practical tools for designers and businesses looking to implement circular approaches.

Leading the Transition to a Circular Economy | Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Additionally, the old but still relevant book “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things” by William McDonough and Michael Braungart is essential reading. This influential work introduces the concept of designing products with their entire lifecycle in mind, eliminating the very idea of waste through thoughtful material selection and product design.

• Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
• The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability--Designing for Abundance

As someone deeply committed to sustainability and regenerative design, I find working with plastic both challenging and necessary. Plastic is emblematic of the linear economy’s failings: a material designed for permanence that is treated as disposable, leading to devastating environmental consequences. While I’d rather not work with plastic, its ubiquity presents an opportunity to reimagine its role within a circular economy.

By approaching waste plastic as a case study, I aim to exemplify the principles of the circular economy:

1. Eliminating Waste and Pollution
2. Circulating Materials at Their Highest Value
3. Regenerating Natural Systems

Eliminating Waste and Pollution

Plastic waste is both a pollutant and a missed opportunity. Every piece of plastic removed from circulation is one less potential contaminant in ecosystems. By transforming discarded plastic into useful objects, we not only prevent further harm but also demonstrate that waste itself is a design flaw. This process inherently aligns with the circular economy’s call to eliminate waste and pollution through better design and systems thinking.

There’s also just a ton of it! Its a ubiquitous material that we could be using in our local communities in much more interesting ways. (Bruce Sterling has some interesting ideas about neighborhood circular workshops in his book Shaping Things; Likewise, Cory Doctorow’s Makers has an inspired plot about 3D printing innovators building robots that every day print, deconstruct, and reprint an amusement park ride)

Circulating Materials at Their Highest Value

One of the critical failures of traditional recycling is that it often downgrades plastic into lower-value applications, further hastening its path to waste. Small-scale, localized recycling can instead preserve or even enhance the value of plastic (granted this is happening too now in larger more interesting ways!?). By minimally processing waste plastic, we can maintain its integrity and create durable, high-value objects designed for longevity.

This opens the door to speculative possibilities:

• What if plastic objects were no longer disposable but cherished, heirloom-quality items?
• Could we design products from locally recycled plastic so meaningful and beautiful that they are repaired, reused, and valued across generations?
• What if these objects were designed for future recyclability, ensuring they never become waste again?
• How do we “sequester” plastic in local circular networks?

Regenerating Natural Systems

Though working with plastic may not directly restore ecosystems, removing potential pollutants from the environment contributes to regeneration in a broader sense. By reclaiming toxic plastics and transforming them into longer-lasting, high-value objects, we effectively sequester these materials, at least in the short term. This process of sequestration allows natural cycles to operate closer to their intended state. While not perfect regeneration, it represents a significant improvement by reducing the immediate environmental impact of plastic waste.

Furthermore, this approach aligns with circular economy principles by circulating materials at their highest value. By upcycling plastic waste into durable, desirable products, we extend the lifecycle of these materials and prevent them from becoming pollutants. This shift in perspective — from viewing plastic as waste to seeing it as a valuable resource — is crucial in addressing plastic pollution and moving towards a more sustainable, circular model.

Imagining a Speculative Future

The goal isn’t just to recycle plastic differently; it’s to show people an entirely new way of thinking about materials and their lifecycle. Through this work, we can model a speculative future where:

• Products are designed for disassembly and re-manufacturing.
• Communities embrace small-scale recycling hubs that localize production and keep materials in continuous use.
• Objects inspire emotional and functional value, becoming integral parts of our lives rather than temporary conveniences.

This approach is about more than just creating objects; it’s about provoking conversation, inspiring change, and showcasing the potential of a circular economy. It’s a speculative design practice with a practical edge — pointing the way toward a more regenerative, thoughtful, and sustainable future.

By embracing plastic as a material we can rethink, remake, and reuse, we take a necessary step in designing for the circular economy. This is not about celebrating plastic but about challenging its wasteful use and demonstrating that even the most problematic materials can have a meaningful place in a circular, regenerative system.

Images in header:
Kids turning old plastic sacks into a woven rug: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3928436027/

Modernist Floral Background: https://flickr.com/photos/center_for_jewish_history/7974347191/

Both are from Flickr Commons, No Known Copyright Restrictions.

Exploring Plastic as a Case Study for the Circular Economy was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In an era where sustainability has become a pressing concern across all industries, the field of graphic design is no exception. As visual communicators, graphic designers play a crucial role in shaping perceptions and influencing behavior. But when it comes to sustainability, a fundamental question arises: What does (should?) sustainable graphic design actually look like?

By examining four potential “answers” to this question, we can begin to unpack the complexities of sustainable design aesthetics and their implications for the future of graphic design practice.

1. The “Eco-Friendly” Aesthetic

The first and perhaps most obvious answer is that sustainable graphic design looks “eco-friendly.” This aesthetic often involves earthy color palettes, natural textures, and imagery associated with nature and environmental conservation. While this approach can effectively communicate sustainability at a glance, it also presents limitations.

Pros:

• Instantly recognizable as “green” or environmentally conscious
• Aligns with consumer expectations of sustainable branding
• Can evoke positive emotions associated with nature and conservation

Cons:

• Risk of “greenwashing” if not backed by genuine sustainable practices
• May become cliché or lose impact through historic overuse
• Can limit the range of visual expression for diverse brands and messages

2. The “Innovative” Aesthetic

Another approach posits that sustainable graphic design should look innovative and futuristic, emphasizing technological solutions and forward-thinking ideas. This aesthetic might incorporate sleek, minimalist designs, bold typography, and cutting-edge digital elements.

Pros:

• Challenges the notion that sustainability is about “going back to basics”
• Aligns with the idea of sustainable innovation and progress
• Can appeal to tech-savvy audiences and future-oriented brands

Cons:

• May not resonate with all audiences or sustainability contexts
• Risk of appearing cold or detached from natural elements
• Could potentially date quickly as technology and trends evolve

3. The “Status Quo” Aesthetic

A third perspective suggests that sustainable graphic design should look no different from conventional design. This approach argues that sustainability should be integrated into the design process without necessarily changing its visual outcomes.

Pros:

• Emphasizes that sustainability can be achieved without sacrificing design quality or brand identity
• Allows for a wide range of creative expression
• Avoids potential stigma or stereotypes associated with “green” design

Cons:

• May not effectively communicate sustainable efforts to audiences
• Misses opportunities to visually educate and inspire sustainable behavior
• Could be seen as maintaining the status quo rather than driving change

4. The “Non-Existent” Aesthetic

Perhaps the most provocative answer is that sustainable graphic design looks like nothing because it does not exist. This concept challenges us to reconsider the very nature of graphic design and its role in a sustainable future.

Pros:

• Forces a fundamental rethinking of design practices and their environmental impact
• Encourages exploration of non-visual or ephemeral communication methods
• Aligns with principles of dematerialization and resource conservation

Cons:

• Potentially limits the communicative power of visual design
• May be difficult to implement in practical, real-world scenarios
• Risks rendering graphic designers obsolete if taken to the extreme

A 5th Approach: Vernacular-Inspired Systems

Through the exploration of these four initial answers, a fifth approach emerged: a design process that draws inspiration from vernacular design principles, local traditional ecological knowledge, and systems thinking. This approach seeks to create sustainable graphic design by:

• Studying local, traditional design solutions that have stood the test of time
• Emphasizing functionality, efficiency, and cultural relevance
• Incorporating systems thinking to consider the entire lifecycle of design products
• Adapting historical visual languages, tools, and materials to contemporary contexts

This vernacular-inspired systems approach offers a unique aesthetic that balances innovation with tradition, and global concerns with local solutions. It acknowledges that sustainable design must be both culturally and environmentally appropriate, drawing on the wisdom of the past while addressing the challenges of the future.

Conclusion

The question “What does sustainable graphic design look like?” does not have a single, definitive answer. Instead, it opens up a rich dialogue about the role of aesthetics in promoting sustainability, the risks of greenwashing, the responsibilities of designers in shaping a more sustainable world, and the potential for design to drive positive change.

As we continue to grapple with environmental and social challenges, it is clear that sustainable graphic design must go beyond surface-level aesthetics. It requires a holistic approach that considers materials, processes, cultural context, and long-term impact. By exploring diverse visual strategies and drawing inspiration from both innovation and tradition, graphic designers can create work that not only looks sustainable but actively contributes to a more sustainable future.

Ultimately, the aesthetics of sustainable graphic design will continue to evolve as our understanding of sustainability deepens and new challenges emerge. The most effective approach may be one of flexibility and continuous learning, where designers remain open to new ideas while grounding their work in principles of environmental and social responsibility.

Ellen Lupton said of her book Thinking with Type that it was a book for everyone because everyone deserves good typography. I think that everyone deserves good design and so we need to make design tools and content available to everyone at the highest level. If design is for everyone, then we need a much more equitable way for us all to access tools and recipes and resources. This is what “A New Design Commons” embodies.

David Bollier defines the commons as “all the things that we collectively own and believe that we should maintain for future generations.” This means that we will have some sort of moral or personal or community attachment to these “common” things. Nobel Prize winner Eleanor Ostrom expands on this and says that the commons isn’t just these resources that we’re attached to, but it is the self-organizing social systems around those things that are what actually help govern and preserve them.

If we apply this to design, then it’s the fonts and images and tools and the frameworks that we need to make design. It is then also the social and technical systems that are required for preserving and sharing the fonts and images and frameworks, as well as returning to an ideal where designs and designers are able to freely build upon the works that have come before.

Something that will popup over and over again, is an acronym FLOS(S), which stands for Free/Libre Open Source (Software). And this is software that you are free to do with what you will. This does not imply that it has to be free as in price, but that it is free as in freedom. This is another component of a design commons: you must be free to remix and reuse materials and tools. Again: It does not need to imply that these things are free as in price. Europeans refer to this as “libre, not gratis” noting this IS a difference in the free software communities. Free as in freedom, not free as in price.

OLD NEWS (Sept2022): While I’ve been working on this presentation, Adobe announced that they’re acquiring the online prototyping tool, Figma. And while this is just normal in our technocracy, that the big fish eat the little fish, Figma, if you have used it, it’s one of the most fun collaborative design tools that I have ever used, and it also has built into it a community feature where if you have modified Figma yourself, that you can share that modification back to the community. And everyone can just add that to their version of Figma using a community portal. Adobe says that none of these things are going to change, but I think that that will remain to be seen. They don’t have the greatest track record with these sorts of things. (This ended up being stopped by the EU)

NEW NEWS (June2024): Adobe has frustrated people w/ its most recent TOS which basically say that if you utilize any of their cloud features, your work will probably be spied on for term violations, used to help train the Adobe machine learning-based image generator, etc. (See the Verge and Cnet)

In 2019 to point this out, Adobe turned off creative cloud access to anyone in Venezuela as part of the US sanctions. We could argue if this is okay or not within what an American company should do based on US law, but it signals pretty clearly that we DO NOT own these tools anymore, we just rent access to them, and that even paying our rent isn’t enough to KEEP access to these tools. As a design educator, this is troubling. We are supposed to be creating NEW knowledge. But we are training our students to use things that tech aristocrats can wall off from them at any time in the future. Our files and programs could just become inaccessible. This is a form of intellectual enclosure — like the walling off of public lands as a metaphor.

Looking for an alternative? You could try using more open source software in your classrooms and practice. And these are tools that even if they end up being acquired or the developers who are working on them decide to stop working on them. Their source code is still available, and there are examples of programs where a different community takes over upkeep of software in the realm of F/LOSS.

If you haven’t ever used Blender, but you do 3D rendering, you should download Blender and give it a try! Blender is actually free — libre AND gratis, and it has an amazing library of tutorials and all kinds of extra addons and extensions…

What’s great about these softwares though isn’t just that they are, that the freedom but that they have communities that are actually working on them.

A designer at Adobe, Garth Brathwaite, who has been inspired by his collaboration with open source software developers wrote a design manifesto about a decade ago for how designers might open up their practice a little bit more — how designers might “open source” more. And he outlines these ideas that are really mostly about being less self-conscious and being more open to sharing and being more collaborative on purpose. And what he’s really describing is just how human creativity has traditionally worked. We’ve taken each other’s things, we’ve copied them, we’ve improved upon them, and that’s how cultural production happens (until recent history).

So what makes design HARD to open? hard to liberate? why is this harder as a designer than as a developer? One issue is just the way that copyright has evolved in the United States and Europe, and the way that we protect intellectual property in our contemporary society.

The New Design Commons takes a different approach to contemporary copyright to try and work around this. F/LOSS uses different kinds of licenses, A New Design Commons needs to reconsider copyright. Creative Commons is a way to say, instead of the binary of all rights reserved (traditional contemporary copyright/IP law) or no rights reserved (the public domain), that we can say we want some rights reserved and I want to control how people use my creative cultural production. My favorite Creative Commons license is the BY-SA, which stands for by-attribution-share-alike, which means you have to credit where you got the work from (by attribution) and then also share your work in the same way (share alike). It creates a kind of design bibliography where we can then see where design ideas have come from and where they’re leading to and I think this is an important aspect of a design commons. This is how we help MAKE the resources and tools we’re using available and usable.

If this intrigues you, and you’d like to use resources that are licensed and released this way, there’s a variety of resources already waiting for you to take advantage of. Creative Commons used to manage a search that was called CC Search, but is now run by Automattic, the company that makes WordPress and a variety of other open source software. They’ve renamed it Openverse, and it searches a whole bunch of different resources that are public domain and Creative Commons, and then links you out to the correct place to actually go download the image or content and get the correct citation for those things.

Flickr also maintains a site called Flickr Commons that pools research institutions and cultural institutions who have public domain work that they’ve decided to photograph or scan and share.

There are also plenty of typefaces that fall into this category. Google Fonts helps to fund designers and developers to make open font license fonts. There’s also some interesting type foundries like Velvetyne in France and the League of Moveable Type in New York who all of their fonts are open source.

And if you are looking for design classroom materials that are Creative Commons, the AIGA Sponsored a project called Digital Foundations — Intro to Media Design where Xtine Burroughs and Michael Mandiberg translated Bauhaus werker’s style visual fundamentals courses to use digital tools instead. One version of this, is the Adobe Creative Cloud version, but Xtine and Michael then collaborated with a community of open source design software enthusiasts to rewrite all of the projects for using open source software too.

We as Design educators, we’re all doing this as well. The AIGA DEC teaching resource is a kind of commons where you can share your classroom projects with everyone else. What’s missing is this idea that we want to encourage people to modify and reshare: if you’ve changed these things, share them back! And that we make sure that we then cite the history of who got inspired by whom and what new things that has led to.

A Design Commons is perhaps a bit of a utopian vision. However, I’d like to think it’s pragmatically utopian because all of the things required for making a New Design Commons exist already — nothing new needs to be invented. We just need to change our behaviors. Though that’s perhaps the most utopian vision: that people would change. We need utopian thinking so that we aren’t constrained by the present possible. The present possible has led us to things like a climate crisis and social injustice and designs that focus on made up market needs, not necessarily what benefits real people in their real lives. And so perhaps we need some kind of commentary on the status quo that critiques that design is for the market and instead that design is for everyone.

Thanks.

This is a transcript of a presentation I gave at the 2022 AIGA Surface conference … Slides can be found here: https://design.penpot.app/#/view/e8ad58f0-356f-11ed-a332-c67f7655c7b3?page-id=c63c8660-4640-11ed-9172-27bf6a7e9f0e&section=interactions&index=0&share-id=293a2d3f-de7f-80de-8004-8161553768c9

Note: The following is an introductory lecture to a new product design course I am working through at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), PRD 223: Design for the Circular Economy. It’s mostly legible as a stand alone essay, so I thought it would be a good way to disseminate some thinking on circular designing. If you think I’m missing something, have a correction, desire more clarity, or want to talk through this more, please let me know!

Ellen MacArthur came to her interest in the circular economy through spending weeks on her boat without the ability to restock. In her extreme circumnavigation expedition, her boat had to function as a self-contained system, holding all the food and fuel and equipment — the resources — necessary for the foreseeable future. This situation mirrors the Earth itself.

R. Buckminster Fuller encapsulated this concept with his term “ Spaceship Earth.” He proposed that we should view the Earth as a massive spaceship. We have finite resources and no opportunity for restocking from the universe. The only thing we get more of is sunshine and the occasional meteor. As such, we must become better operators of Spaceship Earth. We need to think in the loops and cycles of nature so that with just the power of the sun we’re able to always “restock” without running up against our finite material limits.

How does this perspective inform circular thinking as required for the Circular Economy? It suggests we need to reduce our NEW resource consumption without diminishing our outcomes (and! also CHANGE the desired outcomes). We must aim to minimize our impact and maximize the outputs. Nature, for instance, only absorbs sunlight, with everything else any ecosystem needs to flourish coming from only the stardust that originally formed the Earth reconstructed and recirculated endlessly.

Nature runs on sunlight.
Nature uses only energy it needs.
Nature fits form to function.
Nature recycles everything.
Nature rewards cooperation.
Nature banks on diversity.
Nature demands local expertise.
Nature curbs excess from within.
Nature taps the power of limits.
(From Biomimicry)

We’re going to base our study of the circular and linear economies on a specific material case study: Plastics. I want to focus on plastic for a few reasons. First, it’s a ubiquitous material. It’s inexpensive and (theoretically) easy to collect. It’s available everywhere, in just about any city, particularly in large city areas with large box retailer locations. It’s commonly used in packaging and countless objects themselves. Because it’s malleable at low temperatures, it’s fairly easy to work with, and it can be molded into various forms with a variety of techniques, you can work it with hand tools. It has many potential applications in small scale manufacturing due to its versatility and adaptability and current ubiquity.

However, our current linear approach to plastic-taking, making, using, and disposing ususally results in all these plastics ending up out loose in the world. Both as large object trash, like an bottles just floating down a stream, or plastic bags and films caught in grass clumps and tree branches; to countless variations of degraded “micro plastics” infiltrating everything. We continually have to extract new petroleum to produce plastic, which goes through a complex process to become objects that eventually become trash and pose environmental threats. At almost every step of plastics production, plastics use in some contexts, and plastic disposal plastic is a toxin.

An ideal future (one where the welfare of all life is the key imperative) would involve no new plastic production. Yes, NO NEW PLASTIC PRODUCTION. And minimal plastic use. More plastic has ALREADY been made than we actually could ever need. If we can find a way to reclaim and reuse whats already created, we can quickly move towards eliminating new production. The idea of “chemical recycling” or “advanced recycling” where the plastic is broken down to raw polymers is also still toxic; so while there might be a role for “advacned recycling” in large industry in the future, for the purposes of our class, and for workiung through ideas of a local circular economy, we will focus on physical recycling and repurposing.

When designing for a circular economy, we need to focus on reusing materials, maintaining their value, and regenerating nature. If plastics are pervasive and harmful to the environment, we should remove them from nature. Take plastic waste and through more inert physical processing methods turn it INTO objects that are suited to being made *from* plastic (what is *plastic-ness* anyway? And how do we what we learn about plastic-ness for the best design choices?) and that also makes our new items and objects easily reclaimable and reusable moving forward.

Let’s consider how we can reintroduce these plastics back into society — either if still as disposable items then only those that can be easily reclaimed and repurposed; NOT necessarily recycled — or as high-value objects that people want to keep. How do we create heirloom, boutique items from plastic that hold significant meaning for people? How can we make the value of our new plastic objects so high, the meaning of the items so great, that one wouldn’t consider getting rid of it, where one would only consider trying to pass it on, or resell it?

The goal is to add value and meaning to reclaimed plastic and use it to represent the concept of a circular economy. This is both a communication problem AND a material and object problem. Objects that help SIGNAL this alternative circular path(s) forward, and also hint at how their raw substances can GO AWAY. Using plastics in this way reduces overall plastics out in the world AND reduces the need for virgin plastic.

Ideally, there should be no plastic in the natural world. That should be the goal we’re pointing toward and explaining. Can we design plastic forms that encourage people to use no new plastics? How does making plastics rarer, more valuable, and completely circular help do this AND explain this? However, NO plastics is not our current reality. Plastics are everywhere as we’ve already discussed. In our immediate present, our goal must be preventing more plastic from entering the environment and begin to reclaim the existing plastic, and then process it in the safest most inert ways, finally turning it into valuable objects and a reliable resource loop.

Nutrient Cycles:

We must operate with a distinction between biological and technical nutrient cycles (Cradle To Cradle does a great job explaining this). In linear models, this differentiation isn’t typically recognized; everything is discarded. Biological nutrients are discarded intermixed with technical ones rendering them ALL useless.

In a circular economy, we must envision the biological and the technical as distinct, separate loops and cycles. There’s a broad division between the biological and technical sides of a circular economy. It’s crucial to prevent these from mixing. This is particularly important when dealing with plastics; we must avoid mixing biological components with technical ones, as plastics in the biological systems are a toxin.

Case study: performance clothing. My sweatshirt is a poly-cotton-spandex blend, as are my pants. This is meant for “performance” — trying to use different materials for their different benefits cotton is good for softness, spandex good for stretchyness, polyester good for moisture wicking and durability… However, these kinds of textiles are hybrids (C2C calls these “Monstrous Hyrbids”) that cannot be easily separated BACK into their respective nutrient cycles. Over time, the wear and tear on hybrid (and pure synthetic) materials produce microplastics (mainly in abrasion while wearing, and then in the washing cycle when being cleaned). Even a small amount of spandex in your otherwise cotton jeans prevents it from being a biodegradable material.

That said, mixing materials isn’t inherently a problem, IF there’s a method to easily and completely separate them. For instance, a chair can be constructed with a plastic or metal frame and a cotton or linen seat, as long as there’s a way to remove the textiles from the plastic frame — maybe metal buttons or a physical clasp or sewing system that can also be disassembled.

Physical construction methods, such as screws, fasteners, bolts, snaps, and dowels, are more compatible with a circular approach. Anything that can be physically removed, even something like welding metal, can be undone in a way that most glues/adhesives cannot.

Products that permanently bond multiple materials together, like a chip bag that layer and intermingle plastic and metal foils, are not separable once combined. While these kinds of products are great for creating durable items and impervious packages, they become useless once their primary function is fulfilled. They can only be downcycled into other products, like heat compressed bricks or maybe DIY makeshift thermal blankets, but they don’t contribute to a useful material cycle — they can only be disposed of (Linear thinking).

Once we start to understand circularity, we next need to figure out how to communicate these cyclical material and service principles effectively to everyone else. How can we help others understand and utilize these concepts? How can we disseminate this knowledge across our campus? among other designers and other students? How can we create a set of instructions and advice to help future students grasp these concepts more quickly?

The goal is for you to leave this class with a solid understanding of these principles, capable of explaining them to your friends, family, future employers, etc. Once you begin thinking in a circular way, these concepts will become easier to grasp, we’ll see more opportunities, and circularity will become easier to disseminate.

Recycling is not the answer

The complexity of recycling stems from a system that places the responsibility of managing waste on local governments and consumers, particularly the public consumer, rather than the companies that produce or select these materials. For example, unmarked plastic films are prevalent as waste because they are challenging to manage, there is no “recycling” for them, making the only real solution to simply discard them, as seen in a lot of food packaging.

Other plastic items are labeled with complex codes indicating the type of plastic, BUT not whether they can be recycled. This leads to further confusion. Placing an item with the recycling Mobius arrows on it in a recycling bin doesn’t guarantee its reclamation. Only about 5% of plastic is properly reclaimed and recycled in industrial and post-consumer supply chains.

This means that nearly 95% of the plastic we have ever produced is either in a landfill, loose in a forest or field somewhere, or degrading in the ocean. That plastic could be repurposed into less harmful objects (less harmful meaning: not just loose plastic slowly degrading into toxic microplastic everywhere, & not requiring new inputs of fossil fuels and toxic by products for MORE virgin plastic). This potential has led to a variety of groups advocating for various types of ocean cleanup and prototyping different solutions to do so. In the Baltimore harbor, for example, three floating trash wheels collect waste from streams and waterways that feed into the bay.

The challenge is viewing plastic as a resource stream and demonstrating next use potential. We must consider how to make plastics MORE valuable in the long term. In line with this thinking, our term will start with us designing and building our own recycling collection system. These bins will not only separate different materials but will also educate our campus colleagues about the inefficiencies of current recycling systems, the nature of different plastics, and their potential uses. This project will show us the issues of trying to work at the downstream end of systems and nutrient cycles when they have been setup with the linear model in mind. This creates opportunities for speculative and critical upstream solutions for how to avoid many of these “waste” objects needing to exist moving forward.

Total separation of different plastics along with the different metals, paper, and cardboard can significantly improve recycling efforts. In a circular economy, single-stream recycling reflects the linear mentality: it degrades everything, thrown in together for “away” disposal, making it much harder to maintain value and to ensure “nutrients” go to the correct loops.

Circular recycling systems, on the other hand, value high-quality materials and considers their potential uses before they are recycled. These benefit from smaller scale, local solutions. For example, even a steel can and an aluminum can are better off separated. Keeping them separate during collection means you can immediately send the materials wherever makes the most sense. The downside: on the “downstream” end, focusing on consumers, this requires substantial public education and new basic tools to help keep everything separated. So eventually we’ll have to think more about where in the “upstream” we can create solutions…

We must remember that some items, such as 3D printing refuse, cannot be recycled in a traditional recycling stream. Unmarked items, or even those made from marked PLA (Polylactic Acid), a plant-based plastic, could be melted and reused in an oven or press, but are not recyclable in the traditional way our US systems work.

A final aspect we should consider within the circular economy: How does design change? How does our work at the downstream end of plastic reclamation, turning plastic waste into something new, and figuring out how we collect all these different plastics most efectively, teach us about the upstream changes we can make? How does messing around where its pragmatic and easy in the short term show us the more effective long term solutions we can speculate and prototype and suggest more broadly?

We’ll be collecting and repurposing plastic, using it to create new items and remanufacturing it ourselves. This process can provide us with ideas for upstream changes — let’s prevent the disposable objects we’re trying to do something with from existing at all in the future. For instance, why aren’t plastic milk containers refilled instead of discarded? If they’re only minor-ly heavier duty they’d be easily refillable. What needs to happen to make them reusable? (or, do we just go back to home milk delivery, etc.)

There’s a company, Loop, working with various big brands to provide reusable, washable metal containers. Unilever is also transitioning some of their soap and shampoo products to solid bars instead of plastic pump bottles. These changes are happening. How can we participate in envisioning more ideas? Through documenting our prototypes and processes, we enable future students and designers to build on our work and further the circular economy faster!

Can we transform our campus into a circular economy? Can we see plastic as a material to create from as artists and designers? Plastic is a cheap, ubiquitous material that, when used well, can create value as an art piece and be kept out of nature (maybe forever!?). All these considerations can be enhanced by adopting a critical or speculative context: What kinds of investigations can we undertake that show the different ways plastic might be used in innovative designs? How in our plastic explorations do we design out plastics? What tools can we propose for people to adopt? What changes when designers and society ant large adopt plastic for only things that make sense…

The goal is not to create perfect objects but to show people what is possible when we think in loops around waste. When we turn waste into food. By viewing waste as a resource, we can ensure that every leftover from one process feeds into another. What can we do with paper that can’t be printed on or drawn on anymore? All these small changes alter how we see and use things around us. By participating in the reuse, remanufacturing, recycling, and rethinking of materials, we can create a future of alternatives.

We can persuade people to drink from cups using their home’s water lines instead of buying water bottles. Or, if disposable cups are necessary, could they be almost immediately compostable? Once used, they could be placed in a planter as fertilizer and soil additive for indoor plants.

Similarly, we could make giant planters out of plastic or use a large 3D printer to prototype functional sculptures and useful objects quickly. After reclaiming these materials, what else can we produce?

Conclusion?

The transition towards a circular economy requires a holistic change in our approach to resource consumption, especially with materials like plastic. Drawing inspiration from Ellen MacArthur’s sailing experiences and Buckminster Fuller’s concept of Spaceship Earth, we must recognize the finite nature of our resources and the need to minimize our impact, while maximizing potential outputs (and reusable throughputs!).

Plastic, while a ubiquitous and versatile material, is a significant challenge in our circular economy journey. Our linear approach to plastic results in environmental threats and a constant need for new extraction of oil and multi step, toxic production. The ideal future involves no new plastic, instead focusing on reusing and repurposing what we’ve already created in long lasting, looping ways.

We need to remember to separate the biological and technical nutrient cycles and prevent them from mixing — from contaminating each other. Our clothing choices, for instance, should veer towards natural materials to avoid the production of microplastics and keep the nutrient cycles separate. Let’s leave plastics for the places they work the best. (What are these? can we figure that out?)

The current challenges in recycling stem from a system that places the responsibility on local governments and consumers, rather than the companies that produce these materials. Only a small percentage of plastic is reclaimed and reused in our supply chains. To view plastic as a resource, we must build a new collection and recycling system, new looping systems, separating different materials and educating our colleagues about the inefficiencies of current systems and the potential better uses of different plastics.

These challenges and opportunities are what we must face as we work towards a circular economy. The goal is not only to reduce waste but to rethink our approach to resource consumption fundamentally, aligning our actions and our man made systems with the cyclical nature of our planet.

Originally published at https://www.bjornpaedia.com.

The following essay is from a series of writings I turned into a lecture in 2014. From 2011–2014 my work colleagues and I explored a bunch of custom cobbled together tools and ideas we called “CAPE: Create Anywhere Publish Everywhere” — this was about how we could take content developed in a variety of places and cut it up and feed it to all the other places we might need it… Now the modern web works a lot like this, but in 2011/2012 we thought we were geniuses… Anyway, I was trying to find ways to send things direct to indesign for a more controlled printing solution than HTML/CSS print styling could get us… #purecontent

InDesign, Word, and various other all-in-one document/software types make it is hard to connect or anchor an addendum piece of content to the flow without actively inserting it somehow. Distinctions between an “introduction” paragraph and a regular paragraph become fuzzy. Paragraph styles for both might be the same in terms of aesthetics, however, semantically, or meta-data-wise, there might be need/desire for a difference.

Let us say you have a designed book. All the editing, etc. for printing has already happened. However, now that content is locked into that usability space.

This is no different than using InDesign for writing. I think designers might often do this — it isn’t uncommon to directly design and write your syllabus in InDesign. Or perhaps, project sheets, etc.

Also, in terms of hierarchy within a syllabus, there are things like headlines, subheads, paragraphs, etc. that will all get paragraph stylings or perhaps character styles (to use InDesign vernacular). However, this isn’t quite as good as say styling with CSS which gives you different sorts of meta-data control, or the ability to say that the paragraph tags of class “lecture” do something different than paragraph tags of class “project” — though they are still paragraph tags… hmmm… I guess you can do this by just using different paragraph styles — but it isn’t quite as intrinsically simple in inDesign or word as it is in CSS.

If you want paragraphs to look the same, but be different, or tagged, in terms of their different content, paragraph styles or similar aren’t really enough to do that…

Coding languages are much better equipped to handle things like this. Variables, Fields, File-types, etc.

Visual styling is concerned with hierarchy. Content organizing is concerned with structure.

There is visual hierarchy and structural hierarchy. We want to worry the most about the structural hierarchy. This is what will remain the same across all uses. The visual hierarchy we can allow to change as a function of the structural hierarchy and the use

Create Anywhere, Publish everywhere has some key concepts that must be understood.

Create Anywhere: This doesn’t mean with any software, or in any format unfortunately. This “Anywhere” means anything that is capable of outputting semi-structured, little-to-no-formatted text/content. However, there are ways of converting things like word docs, google docs, spreadsheets, etc. into better formatted options. This just takes 1 central repository/program that can pull in all various datas and datatypes and formats, and convert, splice, and format them in friendlier, more universal ways; as well as optimal formats for specific use cases ( InDesign likes XML, most web things like JSON right now). Once data is in the central repository — or the CAPE framework — this can be accomplished fairly simply… The content can even then be “generated” to a pure form for future updates, etc. via best practices.

Originally published at https://www.bjornpaedia.com.

Donald Knuth was so offended by the bad typesetting of a second printing of his computer programming books that he decided to invent his own typesetting program to solve the problems bothering him.

Donald Knuth says that his aim in creating TEX is to beautifully typeset technical documents especially those containing a lot of Mathematics. (LATEX Tutorials, A PRIMER, Indian TEX Users Group, Trivandrum, India, 2003 September, I.1.2. Why LATEX?, pg.8)

Donald Knuth is told by his publishers that his “Art of Computer Programming” is going to be reprinted; it has sold so well. The first edition of the book was typeset using a monotype machine. One original master was made from the monotype castings, and then that master was photographed and turned into offset printing plates for the production of the books. By the time the second edition was to be published, the industry was switching to phototypsetting. This galley proof that Knuth receives of the phototypeset pages makes him so depressed, its just so bad looking in comparison, that he says, hey publisher, I’m going on sabbatical, and I’ll just write a computer program and make my own fonts that will reproduce this old technique, rather than rely on the phototypsetters to figure it out, as it appears that they can’t … (Okay, find the videos where he explains this on https://www.webofstories.com/play/donald.knuth/ )

It ends up leading to a collaboration with Charles Bigleow, Hermann Zapf, and more … and students he had that worked with him on TeX and metafont go on to release the first digital typeface, Lucida… and convince Adobe that bitmap fonts designed specifically for laser printing are useful … (https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb34-2/tb107bigelow-wang.pdf)

“It is noteworthy and commendable, too, that Knuth published all the Metafont code for his designs. For commercial reasons, most typefaces are marketed with intellectual property restrictions, but Knuth saw his typographic work as part of a greater goal, the publication of scientific literature and the dissemination of knowledge. He did the same with his TEX system for mathematical composition, publishing the source code for wide usage. A paragon of enlightened generosity.” — Charles Bigelow, in an interview in TUGboat, Volume 34 (2013), №2 (https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb34-2/tb107bigelow-wang.pdf)

There is a real connection between commonly used, continuously up-kept open source software and designing — TeX!

Here’s a perfect place that typography, designing, and F/LOS can come together (these couple of pages are typeset with LaTeX)

Here is a computer programmer and mathematician reading about printing and typeface design, but are there designers studying the reverse? Why don’t we teach Knuth in typography classes!? You don’t have to pay extra, and everyone can use the skills they learn forever into the future!

This needs a project to go with it for sure — use some TeX tool to typeset a document? Research metafont and then see how that connects to contemporary variable fonts?

What sort of map illustrates all how all the design stuff we do and use today ties back to knuth? He was there in the bay working on this stuff at the same time as jobs and apple and warnock and Adobe…

An Introduction

Free/Libre Open Source (F/LOS) is an alternative lens with which to reinvision design practice and pedagogy. The F/LOS realm offers designers not only a pragmatic approach reviving how sociocultural artifacts have historically been created, but also a critical approach that, through utilizing ideologically based software and tools (and having far more ease of access to these software and tools) intentionally positions itself as antidote to status-quo capitalist designing. A designer will find more ways to make; less obstructions to their creative vision; and the ability to learn from and to give back to a community.

The goal here is in pointing out opportunities for a designer to integrate the ideologies of Free/Libre Open Source into one’s practice:

• How can design practice and pedagogy improve by adopting F/LOS?
• What example projects and prompts might inspire workshops or classroom experiments with this content?

I am frequently working at this place of a strange overlap, where: I am pragmatic, I like to make things that ARE makeable; but the ideologies, or the intellectual or creative space the projects operate in is utopian; at least as compared to “status quo” cultural production. So, how can I explore the feasibility of the technical aspects of F/LOS(S) vs feasibility in an actual design practice… a pragmatic utopian?

Quick Background…

In my twenty-year role as a graphic designer, I’ve designed books, album covers, magazines, logos, websites, and built digital tools. Regardless of the final forms, if it’s client-based or self-initiated, I treat all my designs as opportunities for intellectual inquiry and self-expression.

The Sustainabilitist Principles

The Sustainabilitist Principles is a modular manifesto; a collection of the ways of thinking to sustainably design as I considered them in 2009. The goal: create an object whose form embodied the principles it conveyed.

The Sustainabilitist Principles started out as the books on my desk, I was wondering where “sustainable designing” lay within them… mapping connections between ideas… writing about repeating principles… the interconnections over time and space of similar ideals… how to clarify access to the ideas for the next designer.

The final output of this direction brought necessary pieces together in an intentional, ephemeral form for an exhibition. I did not need to make another book or a poster series to explain these principles: the objects themselves could do it if I put them together correctly! The books were my actual books. The screen-printed definitions were printed on the front matter of found paperback novels. The interconnecting embroidery floss was used in the longest possible pieces to maximize the reuse of the thread afterward.

This was what I felt was my first successful piece of “sustainable graphic design.” It was also my final “answer” to a question in grad school: “What does Sustainable Graphic Design look like?”

What does SGD look like?

This question continues to fascinate me. Alongside the Sustainabilitist principles, I had works that I felt fell into 3 types “answers” — and then a 4th wild card…

• Sustainable Graphic Design Looks The Same — Good design is good design. If you pick the right materials or processes sustainable design doesn’t need to look or be any different.
• Sustainable Graphic Design Looks Eco-Friendly — Clearly wearing one’s environmental and social activism on one’s sleeve. Renewable energy, plant motifs, brown paper, natural dyes, etc.
• Sustainable Graphic Design Looks Innovative — Sustainability brings with it new ways of thinking, new tools, new technology; and so visuals should be new and innovative too…
• AND, Sustainable Graphic Design Does Not Exist!

Sustainable Design does not exist

“Sustainable design does not exist” was at first pessimistic. Is design all just trash? does design create waste period, so nothing is sustainable? Anything we make is unmaking so much else; so all design is unsustainable.

But! “Sustainable design does not exist” came to signify an alternative; it didn’t exist because it was ephemeral! because it reused existing objects in a new way! that it left no trace! that it was part of some continuous vernacular process! suddenly this was a prompt for new works; new questions; new directions! A useful constraint for future work.

Define Sustainability & Define Sustainabilitists

When I talk about sustainability, I’m talking about these mindsets.

• The triple bottom line — separate but additive; each space has potential for sustainability, but you can focus on one without the others.

• Nested: Economy within Society within Nature — holistic; what buckminster fuller was talking about when he said we live on “spaceship earth” — If you frame everything this way, you can’t accidentally leave out a kind of sustainability.

Defining Sustainable Graphic Design

In the 2013 book Flourishing: A Frank Conversation about Sustainability, John Ehrenfeld writes “The key to doing something about sustainability is that you first have to say what it is that you want to sustain.” To define sustainable graphic design we must first define what it is we are sustaining.

To define sustainable graphic design we must first define what it is we are sustaining.

Sustainable graphic design is design in service of what we want to sustain — how do you decide what’s worth sustaining? (because, if we pick the wrong thing, say we want to sustain the status quo, then that is what sustainable graphic design is — hmmm!?).

Ehrenfeld wants to sustain “that all humans and other life should flourish.”

Designer Bruce Mau has a similar description for the goals of Massive Change: “Our project is the welfare of _all life_ as a practical objective.”

This is what we’ll use as our definition of Sustainable Graphic Design for the remainder of this piece:

Sustainable graphic design is “graphic design in support of all life flourishing,” or, “graphic design for the welfare of all life.”

Sustainable Graphic Design is DIFFERENT

Sustainable Graphic Design defined this way is different than “regular,” cultural production. All life flourishing is not the traditional goal of business, culture, and design.

Throughout western art and design history new or “different” thinking and tools correlate with new aesthetic outcomes.

Sustainability brings with it all manner of new technologies, new social structures, new tools. Should Sustainable graphic design then carry with it additional new forms and aesthetics?

An example: Selecting a font

Should a font’s appearance matter as much as the energy and material and social ills it saves? Is selecting a font that uses minimal ink the best way to select a font? Would a font that is condensed, that uses up less space (saving paper over a print run; exposure to chemicals to the printer) be better? Can we combine the these? The thinest, most condensed, lightest ink coverage font is the most sustainable? This can easily be taken absurd lengths. This might be “Critical Design,” critiquing the status quo; it tackles resultant outcomes from a resource perspective; but does it embrace “the welfare of all life?” Making choices around resource use might make “less bad” graphic design, does it make for sustainable graphic design?.

SGD looks Ideological & Critical (& Beautiful)?

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby write in their 2001 book Design Noir: The Secret Life of Objects that “all design is ideological, the design process is informed by values based on a specific world view.” If our world view is “the welfare of all life,” how does that shift what and how we graphic design?

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby are proponents of “critical design,” design that “provides a critique of the prevailing situation through designs that embody alternative social, cultural, technical, or economic values.”

Sustainable graphic design is not just design that helps people and our planet, but design that is also critical of existing social, cultural, technical, AND economic structures; since many of these things are harming all life, not helping them to flourish.

We judge graphic design on whether or not it is formally “good.” But, we use visual criteria for “formal goodness” or “beauty” are part of the systems we must be critical of.

Contemporary formal goodness evolved from late 19th through mid-20th centuries western art traditions.

Mid-century modernism is so embedded in culture that the “rules” of graphic designing are just the “rules” of modernism.
— Jerome Harris / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4ygiodaY40

The formal concepts from Modernist Capitalism do not lead to all life flourishing (it’s usually the opposite!).

We need new criteria for what formal goodness or “beauty” now are for Sustainable visual output!

Example: Green Acres

Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses, and Abandoned Lots was a book I worked on with my friend and curator Sue Spaid, for the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, OH. Green Acres featured artists using farming as their art practice.

The goal: make the resultant book “sustainable.” These were sustainability focused artists, how could I represent their ecological inventiveness in a printed book? The things that made the production of this book “sustainable” were that it was printed on demand, and used recycled, unbleached paper.

Visually, the book’s design was meant to be critical design; the juxtaposition of small art farm graphics vs. giant commercial farm references via a constrained square grid and the aerial commercial farmland photography.

While the book intends to say something different, it conforms to common standards of “good” modernist layout. Other than a minor production method improvement, it’s the same … ! Is it Sustainable Graphic Design?

A Descent Down the black hole that is Beauty

In The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton writes: “To call a work of architecture or design beautiful is to recognize it as a rendition of values critical to our flourishing. A transubstantiation of our individual ideals in a material medium.” This would then seem that However our ideals are materialized into graphic design yields “beautiful” graphic design.

This then implies that Sustainable designers must see the non-sustainable as the less than beautiful. Edwin Datschefksi calls this “the hidden ugliness of traditional products.”‡8 Basically, the non-sustainable is (& can only be) ugly.

Beauty will align with your values. A design is both sustainable AND beautiful when its form declares that humans and all other life should flourish. Is there a style, aesthetic, or form says this?

“To call a work of architecture or design beautiful is to recognize it as a rendition of values critical to our flourishing. A transubstantiation of our individual ideals in material medium.”

- Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

Alain de Botton thinks that Beauty’s perception aligns with one’s values. However our ideals are materialized into graphic design yields “beautiful” graphic design.

Sustainable design’s form declares “humans & all life should flourish.” / If those are the values we want to align with, then beautiful design’s form declares “humans & all life should flourish.

A design is both sustainable AND beautiful when its form declares that humans and all other life should flourish.

Sustainable Design = Beautiful Design

If your design doesn’t account for the welfare of all life, whatever the external aesthetics that wrap it, your design is ugly. Edwin Datschefksi calls this “the hidden ugliness of traditional products.” — You are missing a component of holistic “beauty.”

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

- Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, Molly Bawn, 1878

How can both “Sustainable Design = Beautiful Design” AND “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” be true?

How Does a sustainabilitist account for pluralities as to what constitutes “beautiful?”

“there are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness”

— Stendahl

It’s not a new idea that beauty isn’t the same for everyone

“Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.”

— David Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political, 1742

Beauty = intrinsic value. What’s valuable to you!?

Beauty = Value

Value = Good Ethics

Good Ethics = All Life Flourishing

What is a good ethical thing that you value? if we achieve that, it doesn’t matter what it looks like, it will be beautiful!

When your graphic design Makes tangible, makes understandable something about sustainability or climate change, then it is signaling sustainably.

This is doable no matter the project; no matter the prompt. There are myriad aspects of climate change and sustainability one might signal. Each in their tiny part we can think of as contributing to “all life flourishing.”

This is another opportunity to find the “context” for which “beauty” becomes apparent in a design without resorting to superficial, external styling.

Signs Signaling Sustainability?

Here are some Signs Signaling Sustainability

Amager Bakke Vapor Ring

A concept that was never able to be finished; but that sent me down this direction: Amager Bakke is Copenhagen’s waste to energy plant and is so clean its exhaust stack puffs only CO2 and water vapor. An early design featured a smokestack that upon capturing 1 ton of CO2, exhausts it as a smoke ring. You get to SEE a ton of CO2. Helps you visualize this otherwise intangible!? (Bjarke Ingels Group)

https://big.dk/#projects-arc

Reverberation Crosswalks

Reverberation Crosswalks are fun, brightly colored crosswalks. Just paint on cement and asphalt they still signal a sustainable vector forward. The neighborhood around this intersection is now more walkable. You can’t not notice the crosswalks. They contribute to life flourishing in the city. This concept is cheap; fast; easily replicated; can be customized for region, culture, available materials, etc. (Graham Coreil Allen)

https://grahamprojects.com/projects/reverberations-crosswalk/

solar.lowtechmagazine.com

Low Tech Magazine’s solar powered website signals how we might visualize energy usage; how we might enable new systems of powering our tools; questions if we really need constant connection; and how aesthetic choices correlate to physical resources even in the digital sphere. (Kris De Decker & Marie Otsuka)

LOW←TECH MAGAZINE

DC High Water Mark Project

The DC water mark project visualizes increased flooding and water level rise. The water level rings articulate “oh shit, this place might be underwater pretty frequently given our current projected future!” By signaling this, perhaps we can act accordingly and redirect our present towards a future where that is no longer true. Without _seeing_ your house or office or favorite park area submerged, even symbolically, you cannot envision an alternative. (Curry J. Hackett / Wayside Studio)

https://www.wayside.studio/#Work

Tattfoo Tan, *S.O.S. Steward*

Enrolled in various courses and acquired certification for sustainable/green knowledge. To flaunt new found titles, created merit patches to be worn on gray coveralls during events and gardening sessions.

http://tattfoo.com/sos/SOSGreenStewardship.html

FreshPress Paper

Experimental paper farm. Prairie grass and agricultural waste as new paper fiber sources! These papers end up being very low carbon, or even carbon negative, in their footprints. (Eric Benson)

https://www.freshpress.studio/paper

Cradle To Cradle

The cradle to cradle books are signs signaling sustainability. C2C is a “technical” nutrient — the entire book is made to be taken back into a production process — the pages are plastic, the ink reclaimable. The Upcycle is instead a biological nutrient, made to decompose and return to the cycles of nature. Paper, ink, binding, is all made to biodegrade…

Example: MICA Grad Zine

All of the image and typographic resources are open source or public domain. The printing structure was designed to minimize printing waste — the front and back of this “poster” are printed all as one plate, so the press sheet goes through the press once, then is flipped over, and goes through the press again, voila. This means front and back of the pages were able to all be printed with one plate per color instead of two or more… All of these ideas together, do they add up to a beautiful design? a sustainable design?

A Final Example: Ecovention Europe

Fast forward from Green Acres. Sue Spaid, now living in Belgium, has a new exhibition opportunity: Ecovention Europe, ecologically inventive artists working in Europe, and there is another book.

In the interim since Green Acres, I heard Sara de Bondt discuss the Radical Nature catalog designed for the Barbican in London. De Bondt’s studio wrote a sustainable printing manifesto as part of the research for the catalog’s production.

De Bondt’s “manifesto” got me thinking about what other ways design decisions could be made: How might I re-examine the design choices of Green Acres For Ecovention Europe? Could I improve the sustainability (and the sustainable aesthetics)?

One of the items in De Bondt’s printing manifesto is “use less ink.” This meant selecting colors more carefully.

No color adds up to more that 100% ink coverage. (Ecovention Europe uses CMYK: and color palette swatches start at 100% pure C, M, Y, or K, and then are mixed in equal percentages to keep 100% or less total coverage: 50% + 50%; 33% + 33% + 33%; etc.). This resulted in a color palette that was fairly special for this book. Is that a form of sustainable beauty? critical design?

Reducing ink led to bitmapped city maps as the decorative section markers. The appearance of a filled area is kept (relating back to a Green Acres design choice), but less ink is used comparatively.

Text columns in Green Acres ended at full paragraphs breaks to make editing easier. This gave a formally-nice rhythm to text columns, but it was an inefficient use of space. With Ecovention Europe, I reduced this space by running all the text the full column heights. This had the secondary benefit of minimizing superfluous decoration: In _Green Acres_, superficial decorative elements filled those blanks left by text columns ending mid-page.

I even tried to reduce decision making through reuse. The grid for Green Acres had a lot of conceptual reasoning invested into it, and so I reused the page templates, type choices, grid setup, etc. As a conceptual exercise, this was great. But, did it make much of a difference? How could this be done differently and improved upon again next time? Is there an alternative to making this book at all? (Should this exist? I didn’t ask that question before we began!)

A Conclusion?

Design critic Bruce Sterling outlines three criteria for objects worth making, owning, and keeping:

• Beautiful Things
• Sentimental Things
• Utilitarian Things

“There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. It is never twice the same, because it always takes its shape from the particular place in which it occurs.”

The qualities that promote the welfare of all life are, like the quality without a name, ineffable. And like the quality without a name, aesthetics that correspond with all life flourishing will shift and change with different contexts.

What does sustainable graphic design look like? it doesn’t matter.

I used to be hung up on the visual aesthetics. I wanted sustainable things to LOOK DIFFERENT to have their own aesthetic… but what I’ve learned is that that doesn’t matter. The way things look will be influences by all the other contexts of a project. You might intentionally try to not replicate a sort of capitalist or unsustainable aesthetic; but you also might need those things to say or do what you wish…

As long as the goals of the project are “all life flourishing” — or the like — you’re going to end up with Sustainable Graphic Design!?

I’ll leave you with two more example from my own work. These are ways to make the pieces more sustainable based on my values …

The end?

Originally published at https://www.bjornpaedia.com.

What is Sustainable Graphic Design? was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.