Sustainable Design Town Hall: Sharing Good Ideas

Collaboration is one of the fundamental pieces of a functional design industry. It also happens to be one of the fundamental pieces of sustainable progress. In order to take positive, measurable steps forward, designers need to come together to identify relevant problems, brainstorm new ideas, and troubleshoot potential solutions. And that's what some of us did last week at Lunar, the hosts of a Designers Accord town hall meeting here in San Francisco.

A huge nod goes to Vanessa and the Lunar crew for creating a really successful, open atmosphere for idea sharing. Five of us spent 5-10 minutes each presenting a different idea to the group of about 20 fellow designers and educators. No specific theme, just idea sharing.

I spent my time mostly asking questions, of course. As I told the group, I'm currently helping a couple of different groups develop certification standards for graphic designers and their projects. I've been tapped by Eric Benson of re-nourish and Yvette Perullo of Rethink Design to provide input on a responsible design protocol. The protocol is a three-tiered certification system (partially modeled on the LEED system), intended to provide designers and clients with a rigorous framework for evaluating print design projects. We're also working on a studio-level version, which is where most of my work is being done. Simultaneously, I'm providing similar recommendations to the San Francisco Green Business Program for their design studio guidelines.

Developing these guidelines poses a significant challenge on many levels, and I'll be discussing those in another post soon enough. But last week's presentation, and the ensuing discussion, allowed me to get valuable input from other working designers, which will only strengthen the final recommendations. Folks raised questions, challenged my assumptions, and provided great ideas for improvement. Most of all, I was surprised by how generally open to certification they were. Perhaps it was the knowledge that such a program was being developed with genuine consideration for the limitations and challenges it will face.

There were some really cool ideas passed around by the other four presenters, too. Throughout this week, I'm going to post about each of them, so be sure to tune in (or subscribe to the email feed).